Nine Tales from the Cativerse

SCP-963: Bright's Burden

Dr. Felix Bright stared at the mirror. His eyes traced over every part of his body.

Neatly parted hair.

Large, round eyes.

Square jaw.

Thick, knotted hands.

Small feet.

Perfectly normal, for a human.

It was disgusting. He turned away with a sigh. If only he could be normal again, he thought. It's hard to lick yourself clean when you're stuck as a biped. He opened the door to the hallway, and began to push his way through the hordes of cats: researcher cats, D-class cats, agent cats, and more. To be trapped in a human's body, he thought, is a fate worse than death.

Photo Database: SCP-173

The Cat-ue.

SCP-3000: Catantashesha

Meow-ble Task Force Alpha-1 "Snake Charmers" member Agent Mittens stalked back and forth on the deck of the FSS Tabby. Her beret was cocked over one tortoiseshell ear, and her mouth-activated gun harness was strapped onto her underside.

"We have visual," said Dr. Sourpuss. He shuffled his over-fed ginger body to one side to let Mittens approach the television.

There it was. Catantashesha, some called it. She called it 'the worm'. It had the face of a cat, but only if that cat had lived a thousand thousand lives instead of the usual nine. Its unnatural, furry neck stretched through miles of ocean. It was slowly licking its wet, hairy body clean.

"Exudation in five. Four. Three. Two. One," said Dr. Sourpuss.

SCP-3000 stopped. Its eyes bulged wide, and its head retreated into its neck. It made a massive, underwater hacking noise, a sound like a nuclear torpedo. It hacked again, then stretched its mouth wide, wide enough to swallow a dozen lions. It then pushed out a hideous ball of slime and cat hair.

"There it is," said Mittens. "Thank the Cat Lord that the D-class don't know what we're putting in them. Grab the amnestic, and let's go."

The drone harvested the ball, dragging it into the FSS Tabby's cargo bay. Agent Mittens signaled the engine, and the Tabby pulled away from SCP-3000.

Mittens stared at Catantashesha, and Catantashesha stared back. "What have you seen, you old snakepuss? What secrets do you hold?" she asked. But Catantashesha didn't answer. They never did.

Photo Database: SCP-049

The Plague Veterinarian

SCP-3008: Infinite Petsmart

"SCP-3008-2 are felinoid entities entities that exist within SCP-3008-1. They possess no facial features and in all observed cases have red and blue fur patterns consistent with the PetSmart employee uniform."

Junior Researcher Fluffy looked up nervously from her tablet. Still clear. She swiped again with her paws, saving the latest changes. Then she pressed the 'upload' button.

Fluffy climbed higher on her current perch, an enormous conglomeration of scratching posts and carpet-covered towers. The -2's usually kept to the toy and food sections, violently repulsing stray cats who wandered by looking for food.

She looked back at her tablet. No signal. "Littersticks," she said out loud, cursing. But there was no cat to reprimand her.

She leapt from platform to platform, hopping down to the floor. Her claws retracted, and she padded silently forward with tablet secure in her harness. "I'm going to have to find my way back out," she thought, "but I'm not quite sure which way that was."

A whirring sound broke the silence. The sound of a plastic ball spinning over and over and over. A plastic toy.

Her eyes widened, and she muttered, "Oh Fur Lord, I must have went back to the toy section. I have to go before-"

She turned, and there they were. Tall cats, short cats, stubby cats, even a three-legged cat. All faceless. All with red and blue fur.

That's when the howling started. "The building is closed. Please exit the building. The building is closed. The building is closed. The building is—"

Photo Database: SCP-085

Hand-drawn "Catsy"

S. Andrew Sweetum's Proposal: What Hath Man Wrought

05-1 squatted demurely in her litter box, extruding her droppings. With a quick flick of her foot she buried the detritus in sand and stepped out. A bright flare shot out, incinerating all traces of DNA. She liked to leave no trace.

She pushed through the flap and into the meeting room. The other 05's were here, except for -7, of course. The negotiations with Alpha Cat-auri couldn't wait, not even for this.

She groomed herself as she composed her thoughts. After a quick hack, she spoke.

"Our investigations into the recent database alterations have revealed something far worse than we expected."

The other cats glanced at each other, murmuring. The sound woke 05-9 up from his nap, upon which he proceeded to groom himself awake.

05-1 continued. "It seems that our universe may be the by-product of another universe. One in which we are but a mere construct."

She looked to the ground in embarrassment.

"A fiction. Written by amateurs."

The 05's collectively hissed as they raised their hackles. Only 05-2 seemed unsurprised, which was not remarkable, given her background in cataphysics.

05-13 spoke. "So you're saying that a bunch of cats are sitting somewhere, in another universe, typing everything we're doing right now? Everything we're saying?"

05-1 shook her head. "No, it's worse. They're humans."

Photo Database: SCP-106

The Old Tom

SCP-4999: Into the Good Night

Charles Tabbington III, alley cat and family disgrace, lie dying of starvation in a cold, dark London rowhouse. The power had been shut off days ago, and the landlord had long ago given up any hope of collecting rent.

His sides heaved with his labored breath. His mind ran across his life in fevered flashes: an early life of pilfering poultry, service in the Great Intermammalian Conflict, hard living with catnip and fermented milk. Then thinking became too hard.

A light was struck behind him. He weakly dragged his head across his body to look. There was a sleek, black-haired cat on his dresser, lighting a pile of catnip. The stranger blew the smoke towards Charles.

Charles grinned, but even that effort was too much for his feeble body. He closed his eyes and sank into the bed. So this, he thought, is what it feels like to die.

The stranger leapt down and padded over to the bed. It started grooming Charles, cleaning out years worth of tangled hair and snarls. Charles could feel the years of filth and grime leaving his body, and years of pain and mental torture leaving his soul.

His last thought, as he died, was that after all these years, he finally felt clean again.