The year was 1995, and Summer had crept into Fall.
As October was just around the corner, local children were already fantasising about Jack-o’-lanterns
and Halloween Candy.
But behind all the rubber witch noses and plastic vampire teeth, a real monster lurked.
Something terrifying and dangerous, hiding where few dared to tread.
Among those few were Kyle Ellis and Johnny Rogan, two teenage boys who were about to
experience a horror beyond imagination in the dusty halls of their local dead shopping
mall.
In a previous video, we’ve explained Sirenhead, the 40-foot-tall humanoid entity that can
make whole families disappear without a trace.
Now, we’ve got an even more dangerous creature from the twisted mind of Canadian Master of
Horror, Trevor Henderson.
This is the story of Cartoon Cat, the ferocious feline that can turn childhood dreams into
living nightmares.
(Use this image: https://tinyurl.com/ycdhypry) Let’s see if we can peel away the layers
of mystery and find out what this monster really is, and why you should be so afraid
of it.
Despite its whimsical name, Cartoon Cat is the furthest thing from child-friendly, seeing
as it’s responsible for a huge number of unexplained disappearances.
While Henderson himself has described the being’s form as “malleable”, it’s
most commonly seen as a large, black, cat-like humanoid around nine or ten feet in height.
But it doesn’t bear any resemblance to an actual cat.
If anything, it looks more like the stylised, black-and-white cartoon animals depicted in
old silent cartoons like Felix The Cat, or early Mickey Mouse, complete with spiffy white
gloves.
If you’re unlucky enough to run into this creature, you’ll also notice its huge, glaring
eyes, and its giant, crooked teeth, often stained with blood.
Cartoon Cat has been in our dimension in this form since at least 1939, when the obscure
cartoon from which the Cat takes its form was believed to have been quietly discontinued.
Whether the end of the show itself released him, or if this was pure coincidence, we may
never know.
But what we do know is that Cartoon Cat is pure evil.
While the minds of entities like Sirenhead are a mystery, it has been confirmed that
Cartoon Cat is fully aware of the moral implications of what it’s doing, and even worse, it enjoys
it.
Cartoon Cat is not a being that hunts humans out of hunger; it hunts because it takes pleasure
in the suffering and fear that it causes.
Its tendency towards unspeakable cruelty makes it more like a human serial killer than an
animalistic predator, but Cartoon Cat can do things that no human serial killer could
ever be capable of.
According to Henderson, Cartoon Cat is merely a physical representation of a far more powerful
and incomprehensible being – and he’s able to take a number of other forms based
on the popular conception of what a “cartoon” is.
One such form is the “Cartoon Dog”, with that same unsettling, rubber hose appearance.
Rubber hose was the first popular animation style standardised in the US, and would have
been what the Cartoon Cat was originally animated in.
The name is derived from the fact that the characters’ limbs would move as though they
don’t have bones, more like rubber hoses.
Cartoon Cat’s long, stretchy, boneless limbs are no exception.
However, as people expand their definitions of what a cartoon can be, Cartoon Cat can
theoretically take almost any form – from Spongebob Squarepants to Homer Simpson.
This shapeshifting ability has led to comparisons to similar beings like the legendary Boogeyman,
and Pennywise The Dancing Clown, also known simply as “It.”
Though we can’t be certain if there’s any actual relation between these shapeshifting,
child-snatching beings.
The true extent of Cartoon Cat’s power is unknown, and it’s possible he’s capable
of many more atrocious feats we don’t even know about.
As Cartoon Cat encounters rarely leave survivors, there are plenty of blank spaces in the mythology
of this frightening internet urban legend.
Cartoon Cat is said to stalk and make rudimentary lairs in abandoned places such as homes, warehouses,
and malls, but he could conceivably turn up anywhere.
Anywhere at all…
Back to Kyle and Johnny, and their terrifying Cartoon Cat encounter.
Like most fourteen-year-old boys in the mid-1990s, the duo believed they were invincible, and
felt the need to constantly prove their fearlessness.
They’d picked up spiders, played Bloody Mary in the dark and laughed off the results,
and even approached and knocked on the door of the local “haunted house.”
But the jewel in the crown of teenage machismo would be daring to venture into the local
abandoned dirt mall, and take pictures to prove their courage.
This would be at least a decade before the Urban Exploration trend would take the internet
by storm, so in a sense, the boys were real trail blazers.
Though neither of them had any idea what was in store for them at their intended destination.
The duo may have had more bravery than sense, but they weren’t stupid.
As they prepared to take on their most ambitious expedition yet, they packed two flashlights
and some spare batteries, a Polaroid camera generously and unknowingly donated by Kyle’s
mother, and most serious of all, Johnny’s dad’s revolver.
Johnny knew that he’d be grounded until he hit his forties if his dad found out, but
he didn’t expect his dad would even notice.
After all, they’d only be in the mall for an hour or two – and the gun was good insurance
if they ran into a crazed meth-head while they were inside.
They never expected that their lives would ever actually depend on them using it.
As the afternoon bled into evening, the two boys snuck into the dirt mall via a broken
back entrance.
The mission was simple: Get in, take some pictures of all the abandoned stores, and
then get out.
Easy.
They probably had more to worry about from asbestos left in the building than anything
malicious, or so they thought.
The two boys began exploring the dusty old husk of the building, everything covered in
cobwebs and shrouded in complete darkness.
Were it not for the flashlights, they probably wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
Occasionally, they heard quiet skittering sounds echoing out in the dark around them.
The boys just wrote it off as rats.
Nothing to worry about.
Kyle snapped a few Polaroids of the crumbling food court, and an old Macy’s with a few
dusty racks of moth-eaten clothes.
Johnny could swear that, during the camera’s flashes, he could see the shadows moving in
the corner of his eye.
Maybe it was just his imagination, or a trick of the light.
But every now and then, he couldn’t quite escape the thought that the two of them weren’t
alone in the dirt mall.
Even with his dad’s revolver, he didn’t feel quite as safe as he hoped.
But neither of them had any idea of just how much danger they were in.
Soon enough, the boys felt that they’d hit the jackpot: An abandoned arcade.
These things were huge in the 1980s, and many of the classic machines were still there - from
Street Fighter to Double Dragon.
Of course, power to the machines had been cut off for years, but Johnny figured that
if they kicked a few open, they might be able to score enough quarters to keep them in bubble
gum until the turn of the Millennium.
They kicked away at the lockbox on the back of a Space Invaders machine, having no idea
that something was moving towards them in the dark.
While Johnny continued kicking, Kyle stepped back to take another Polaroid and mark the
occasion.
One more quick flash in the dark, and already, the photo was developing in Kyle’s hand.
Their expedition into the abandoned mall seemed like it was shaping up to be a phenomenal
success, but when the picture fully developed, Kyle’s face fell.
It took him a second to even process what he was looking at, but when the image came
into focus, he almost screamed: As Johnny kicked away at the lockbox, a huge, looming
figure was leaning over the machine.
Its staring eyes were the size of baseballs, and it was packing more long, white teeth
than a piano.
Its stretchy, rubber hose arms were beginning to coil around the machine, white gloves reaching
for a distracted Johnny.
Without even knowing it, these two poor kids had wandered into the domain of Cartoon Cat.
Kyle looked up at Johnny, heart pounding, and saw that the creature was gone.
Johnny hadn’t even noticed, as he still pounded at the back of the machine.
But that didn’t mean they were safe.
Kyle grabbed his friend, and, without a word, began dragging him towards the exit.
There wasn’t time for conversation - they just needed to get the hell away from whatever
was in that arcade with them.
When Johnny tried to protest, saying he was probably only one kick away from scoring them
at least fifty bucks worth of quarters, Kyle just showed him the photo.
In an instant, Johnny understood the need for urgency and was on his feet running as
fast as his legs could take him.
But Cartoon Cat wouldn’t let these two get away this easy.
No, this fatal feline preferred to toy with his prey before devouring them…
As Johnny and Kyle turned the corner out of the arcade, they were stopped dead by the
huge figure standing right in front of them.
The Cartoon Cat was back - crooked, bloody smile wider than either of their shoulders.
Rubber hose limbs wriggling like snakes.
It towered over them, its inky black skin seeming to almost swallow the beams of their
flashlights.
Johnny reached into his pocket and whipped out his dad’s revolver.
He was no Clint Eastwood, but surely six bullets would put anything down - or at least scare
it off.
Johnny drew a bead on the advancing creature and pulled the trigger again and again, gunshots
echoing through the hollow expanse of the abandoned mall.
Two shots missed, and the four that actually connected just seemed to disappear into the
creature’s mass.
Cartoon Cat didn’t even bleed, and it didn’t stop grinning, either - not even for a second.
It was going to enjoy this.
Before Johnny could even scream in terror, a stretchy, cartoon arm shot forward and snatched
him.
It yanked Johnny’s thrashing body up into the air, and effortlessly lifted him over
to the Cartoon Cat’s huge face.
The creature’s jaws swung open, revealing a gaping maw with hundreds of teeth.
This time, Johnny really did scream.
Poor Kyle could only watch, paralysed in fear, as the Cartoon Cat swallowed his unlucky friend
whole.
It was only when he saw Johnny’s kicking legs sinking down the creature’s throat
that he finally snapped out of his trance and started to run like hell.
With one final gulp, Johnny was gone, and Cartoon Cat was ready for seconds.
As Kyle scrambled towards the exit, running for his life, Cartoon Cat was gaining behind
him - bounding forwards on impossible, spring-like limbs.
That thing has just eaten his friend alive right in front of him, Kyle was sure that
he was a goner, too.
But, as luck would have it, Kyle managed to cross the threshold out of the dead mall mere
seconds before his feline pursuer.
He kept running, as Cartoon Cat spilled out of the mall behind him and continued the chase.
Kyle ran so fast and for so long that his legs and lungs burned, and he felt like was
going to throw up.
But, in the end, he finally escaped with his life - Cartoon Cat fading into the distance
behind him and then disappearing entirely.
Probably heading back to the lair to digest, Kyle grimly assumed.
As Kyle finally collapsed from exhaustion on a grassy patch about a mile away from the
mall, the horrific realisation hit him that he’d just lost his best friend, and nobody
would ever know why or how.
In his frantic escape, Kyle had dropped the camera and photos back in the mall, and like
hell would he ever go back to fetch them.
His proof of what happened was gone.
Cartoon Cat would only live on in his nightmares, and in the shadows that seemed to move out
of the corner of his eye.
And so ends the tale of Cartoon Cat, for now.
Another terrifying beast in the vast monster catalogue of Trevor Henderson.
Of course, it’s all make believe, right?
You have nothing to worry about.
I’m sure those rustling noises you’ve been hearing lately have a perfectly rational
explanation.
And everyone sees a shadow move behind them now as then.
...Right?
Check out “Russian Sleep Experiment – EXPLAINED” and “How A Meme (Slenderman) Became Real”
for more on the spookiest corners of the world wide web.