WEBVTT
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At three oh seven in the morning, every television in
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the abandoned mall turns on at once. The same black
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and white cartoon plays on every screen, a smiling cat
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dancing in a perfect loop. Then the music stops, the
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cat stops, and one by one, across fifty flickering screens,
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it turns its head toward you. The cartoon isn't playing anymore.
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It's watching Thursty thrills. This is Thursday Thrills, a quick
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weekly ride into the creepy stories, haunted places, weird obsessions,
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and eerie little corners of the world worth talking about.
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I'm Enrique Cuto, and tonight we're heading back into the
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strange wilderness of Internet horror. Only this time there are
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no foggy forests, no distant warning sirens, and no giant
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shape standing between the trees. This monster prefers somewhere with
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a roof, an empty theater, a forgotten warehouse, a dead
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shopping mall where the lights still hum even though the
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last store closed ten years ago. Somewhere an old screen
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can flicker to life, a tune from another century can
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begin playing to an audience of one. Because tonight we're
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talking about cartoon cat and cartoon Cat is not really
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a cat. That may be the first thing worth noting.
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Cartoon Cat is a fictional internet horror creature created by
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Canadian artist and writer Trevor Henderson. The same imagination behind
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siren Head, long Horse, and an entire gallery of things
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you would never want to see standing at the edge
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of a flash photo. Henderson's monsters often appear in ordinary
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looking images a roadside, a parking lot, an apartment building,
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a field behind somebody's house. The setting feels real enough
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that your brain accepts it before noticing the impossible thing
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inside it. Then comes a short cat, not a completed story,
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just a fragment, and suddenly the image feels less like
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artwork and more like evidence somebody was never supposed to upload.
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Cartoon Cat began appearing in Henderson's work in twoenty eighteen.
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The creature's design borrows the visual language of early black
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and white animation, a pitch dark body, enormous eyes, white gloves,
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long boneless limbs, and a smile broad enough to suggest
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that the face may split open if it gets any happier.
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But there is no single, perfectly consistent model sheet for
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cartoon Cat. Sometimes it's almost playful. Looking. Some times it's towering.
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Sometimes the body stretches thin or folds into shapes that
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shouldn't fit inside of a building. That inconsistency isn't a mistake.
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It's part of the nightmare. Cartoon cat does not have anatomy.
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He has a costume. Henderson has described the thing behind
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that costume as something ancient and empty, a hungry rot
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hiding behind an outdated, smiling face. The cartoon shape is
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not necessarily its original body. It may simply be the
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form it's using for now, filtered through the old images
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people already carry in their minds. And that is there's
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a lot scarier than an evil cartoon that comes to life.
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I mean, if you want to see that, just watch
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fred ol and Ray's evil tunes. You're welcome. It suggests
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the cat is only a mask and the real creature
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is standing somewhere behind it. Now, to understand why that
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mask works so well, we need to have a little
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talk about rubber hose animation. The style became one of
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the defining looks of American cartoons in the nineteen twenties
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and early nineteen thirties. Characters were built from simple black shapes,
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pie cut eyes, oversized shoes, bright white gloves, and arms
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and legs without any visible joints. Their limbs simply bent
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like hoses. Their bodies stretched, flattened, detached, inflated, and snapped
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back into place whenever a gag demanded it. Even the
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gloves had a practical purpose. White hands were easier to
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see moving in front of a black body. These cartoons
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were energetic, musical, and often delightfully weird. Buildings bounced, furniture danced.
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The moon could lean down from the sky and join
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in on the chorus. A character could turn its own
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tail into a tool, remove its head, or squeeze through
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a keyhole without anybody asking how their bones functioned. Because
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there were no bones, there were barely any rules, and
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early cartoons could be surprise macabre. Skeletons danced, shadows, developed personalities, smiling,
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objects came alive. Whole scenes moved according to a dream logic,
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where one image melted into the next, and the story
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could end without explaining a single strange thing you had
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just witnessed. That playful unreality is charming. When the character
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on screen is trying to steal a pie cooling on
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a window, sell it becomes something else when the character
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notices you. Cartoon Cat takes the freedom of old animation
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and removes the joke. A body that can stretch for
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a punchline can also stretch down a hallway. A mouth
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that can swallow a piano hole in a cartoon can
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swallow something else in the dark. A character that cannot
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be crushed, cut, flattened, or blown apart because it always
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pops back into shape is suddenly less funny when you're
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the one trying to escape it. And then there's the smile.
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Cartoon smiles are supposed to reassure us. They tell us
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which character is friendly, harmless, and ready to entertain. Cartoon
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Cat's grin does the opposite because it never changes. It's
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not a reaction, it's not happiness. It's part of the disguise,
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held in place while everything around it becomes worse. That's
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also what makes the creature perfect for the Internet. Henderson
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did not introduce cartoon Cat through a novel explaining its history,
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powers and weaknesses. It arrived as imagery, captions, fragments, and suggestions.
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Fans filled in the empty spaces with videos, games, theories, drawings, animations,
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and arguments over what exactly the creature could do. In
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other words, cartoon Cat spread like modern folklore, not the
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kind passed around a fire, but the kind passed from
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screen to screen. The audience didn't merely receive the monster,
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they helped it grow and inside the fiction that may
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be exactly what it want. The most unsettling version of
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the idea is that human awareness gives cartoon Cat a
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passage into our world. Every remembered image of a smiling
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black and white mascot becomes part of the doorway. Every
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new drawing video and late night podcast gives the shape
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a little more definition. You look at the cat, you
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remember the cat, and now the cat has somewhere to stand.
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This week, that old smile has a brand new reason
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to circulate. In July of twenty twenty six, Sony's Trystar
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Pictures acquired the feature film rights to Cartoon Cat. The
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project is still in the beginning of development. There's no
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announced director, cast, or release date yet, but the studio
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is reportedly moving quickly to find a filmmaker. That means
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cartoon Cat is making the leap that Internet monsters have
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nightmares about, from eerie images shared online to a possible
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full length theatrical film. And after our recent encounter with
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siren Head, it feels like Trevor Henderson's creatures are no
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longer standing quietly at the edge of the Internet. They've
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been noticed by the real monsters in our world, Hollywood.
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Before we go any deeper into the dead, mall, take
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a second to follow Weekly Spooky where wherever you're listening,
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so you never miss a new Thursday Thrills, but also
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so you don't miss all the other great spooky content
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we have. It's always Halloween at Weekly Spooky. And if
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you know somebody who loves Internet cryptids, haunted media, weird animation,
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or monsters with smiles that are way too wide, send
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them this episode. It's the best way to keep these
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strange little nighttime rides rolling along. Now, Cartoon Cat is
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not a creature with verified sightings or old newspaper reports.
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It's a work of fiction that has become an Internet legend.
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So let's treat it the way we would treat any
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good campfire monster. Imagine what happens when somebody sees it anyway.
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Imagine a shopping mall that's been closed for years, not
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completely abandoned, at least not yet. A property company still
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pays for electricity. In a few less dark corridors, security
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cameras still blink above the entrances. Once a week, a
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maintenance worker walks the building to check for leaks, broken windows,
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and copper thieves. His name doesn't matter. What matters is
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that on a wet Thursday night, he hears music coming
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from the old movie theater. It's faint at first, a
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bright little piano dancing through a melody too cheerful for
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the empty mall follows it past the dry fountain, past
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a food court full of stacked chairs, and into a
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lobby where sun bleached posters still advertise films. No one
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remembers seeing the music is coming from Auditorium six. Inside,
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the projector is running. That should be impossible. The digital
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equipment was removed years ago and sold. But a beam
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of pale light cuts through the dust, and on the
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screen is an old black and white cartoon. The film
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projectors had went the way of the Dodo even fifteen
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years earlier. A cat in white gloves dances around a
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kitchen while a wind up bird steals sausages from a pan.
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The cat slips, the bird laughs, The cat stretches one
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arm across the room misses the bird and gets tangled
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into a knot. The film jumps back to the beginning.
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The cat dances, the bird steals the sausage, The cat slips,
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the bird laughs again. The maintenance worker climbs to the
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projection booth. There's no film in the machine, no computer,
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no cable connected to anything, just a projector that seems missing,
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out of time, throwing light through an empty room. Then
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the cartoon changes. The cat misses its cue, The bird
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steals the sausage and waits three full seconds. The cat
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stands motionless in the kitchen. Then it turned away from
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the bird and looks directly out from the screen at
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the projection booth. The worker steps back on screen. The
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cat raises one white gloved hand and waves. The projector
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bulb bursts. The theater goes black, and somewhere below in
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the front row, a seat folds down. The worker does
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what any sensible person would do. He runs. He bursts
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into the lobby, but the piano music is already playing
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through the speakers all over them. All the notes are
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slower now, each one drags, as though the music itself
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is becoming exhausted. Across the food court, an old menu
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screen flashes on. The cat is standing inside it, not
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dancing or waving, just smiling. The worker turns toward the
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nearest exit. Another screen flickers on ahead of him. The
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cat appears there too, one arm stretching just beyond the
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edge of the picture. It's not moving from screen to screen,
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it's getting closer through them. He passes a photo booth,
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and the machine suddenly spits out four photographs. In the first,
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the booth is empty. In the second, two white gloved
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hands grip the curtain. In the third, a black face
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leans into view. The fourth photograph is still developing when
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something inside the booth giggles. The worker reaches the glass
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doors and shoves the crash bar locked locked locked behind him.
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The mall music stops for one second. The building is
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perfectly silent. Then comes a soft, rubbery squeak, like a
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balloon twisting. He looks down the corridor. Cartoon cat is
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standing beneath the dead sign of a children's clothing store.
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Its head nearly touches the ceiling. Now, its arms hang
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all the way to the floor. The gloves are clean white.
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The body is black enough to look like a hole
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cut into the building. Itself, and that smile is waiting
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exactly where a smile should be. The cat takes one step,
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its leg stretches the entire length of the corridor. No running,
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no chase, It simply edits the distance between them. The
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worker slams his shoulder into the door again. The lock
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finally gives rain and cold air rush inside. He stumbles
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into the parking lot, reaches his truck and doesn't look
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back until the engine is running. The mall behind him
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is dark, no cat, no screens, no music. He laughs once,
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because people sometimes laugh when terror has nowhere to go.
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Then the truck radio clicks on. That bright little piano
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tune begins again. In the rear view mirror, a white
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gloved hand slowly rises from behind the driver's seat. That
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story is fiction. Cartoon Cat is fiction, but the reason
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the creature sticks in your mind is very real. It
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turns nostalgia into a mouse trap. See what I did there.
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Most monsters enter through the wilderness, the basement, the graveyard,
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or the dark road home. Cartoon Cat enters through something familiar,
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a style of movement, a tune, a smile you've seen
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a thousand times without ever being afraid of it. It
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asks a nasty little question, what if the things we
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invented to make us feel safe, if we're only teaching
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something else how to imitate us. And maybe that's why
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cartoon Cat feels so perfectly built for this moment. We
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live inside our screens. We resurrect old characters, remix old images,
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and feed forgotten styles back into circulation every day. Nothing
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stays buried, nothing stays canceled, nothing stays off the air,
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not forever. All the classics come back eventually, sometimes as nostalgia,
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sometimes as merchandise, and sometimes if the lights are low
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and the signal is weak, as a tall black shape
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with white gloves waiting just beyond the edge of the picture.
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As my aunt Betty used to always say, everything old
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is new again, so tonight. If an old cartoon begins
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playing by itself, keep an eye on the background. If
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the music starts skipping, turn it off. If the smiling
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cat stops dancing, just leave the room, hell, leave the state.
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And if it looks directly at you, it was nice
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knowing you come back tomorrow for more fear. Until then,
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lock your doors, as if that will help you
