ANAHEIM – So we’re 10 days into an experiment that will likely not be of deep concern to our nation.

That is, unless the Angels win the World Series and get to visit the White House and shake hands with the president, who likes to name-drop Angels All-Star center fielder “Mike Trout” when espousing the merits of the farm bill.

It was during the eighth inning of the May 15 game at Angel Stadium when a few seconds of video footage featuring a now-famous feral feline made its debut on the right-field scoreboard.

Having become known in family-friendly circles as “The Rally Cat,” this is a tuxedo cat, black with a splotch of white where the shirt would be if a cat donned formal attire. The Rally Cat has yellow-green eyes, long white whiskers and a triangular face suggesting a Siamese heritage.

The video clips of its shifting head flashed giant on the screen when the Angels were trailing the Tampa Bay Rays, 5-2. The offense had sputtered all game, leaving only about the 10,000 faithful to witness the debut and ultimately the magical powers of the Rally Cat.

We weren’t exactly seeing Hello Kitty here. Instead, Rally Cat is rather mangy, persnickety and slightly sinister looking – certainly not the kind of purring furball you want to find alone in a dark alley.

Knowledgeable Angels spectators quickly knew something was (cat)fishy since the new Rally Cat snippets were spliced between the stadium’s staple footage featuring the Rally Monkey, the resident spiritual paramedic for Angels comebacks since June 6, 2000.

“Yeah, I knew something was up because it (the cat) was so random,” said longtime Angels fan Rob Rohm of Orange. “This was just like how the Rally Monkey started, something that came out of nowhere.”

In the bottom of the ninth, with the Angels behind by four runs, Rohm sat in Section 212, Row B, a tier behind the Angels dugout, his cellphone camera ready in the event of another cat sighting. He knew this feline could help the Angels scratch and claw their way to victory.

“I told my friends sitting next to me and pretty much called it: ‘Just watch, Trout is going to hit a walk-off home run,’” recalled Rohm of his prescient comments to buddies, Joe Figueroa of Orange and Tom Duino of Aliso Viejo.

Leading off, Hank Conger walked. So did Efren Navarro. The Rally Cat reappeared on the scoreboard, triggering Rohm to get his shot of the cat he immediately dubbed “R.P.,” which is short for Rally Pussy (Cat).

Next, Collin Cowgill singled, scoring Conger to make the score 5-3. Then, with Navarro and Cowgill on the bases, Trout hammered a line drive to left field for his first career walk-off home run.

He rounded the bases, the Rally Cat image back on the scoreboard screen. Players celebrated Trout upon his homecoming. The Angels won in dramatic fashion, 6-5, and made the Angels fans who stayed through the comeback curious about the cat.

It’s quite possible we had just seen the birth of the short-hair/heir apparent to the Rally Monkey, who had become big monkey business for 14 years but hasn’t had enough mojo to end the Angels’ playoff drought for the past four seasons.

“Maybe it’s time for something new? I could get into the Rally Cat,” said Angels fan Leucita Ramon, 32, of Huntington Beach. “The Rally Monkey is kind of yesterday.”

A cat, much like the Capuchin, might not exude fear and power the way another member of the animal kingdom, say a lion, shark or a honey badger, would. But the idea of perhaps replacing “Buttercup” in the seventh inning with Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussy Cat?” is gaining traction.

The players picked up on the Rally Cat. Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who would have taken the loss May 15 if it weren’t for the comeback, wrote on Twitter that night: “Speechless .. wow a great win that dude @Trouty20 is pretty good!!! What a come back.#rallycat#waytopickmeup.”

Angels pitcher C.J. Wilson posted a photo of the Rally Cat on Instagram. By midnight, The Rally Cat (@TheRallyCat) had a Twitter account and was trending among Angels fans who used the #rallycat hashtag.

Rally Cat returned the next night when the Angels were down, but the feline couldn’t reverse the fortunes, with the Angels losing, 3-0. But the Angels have won six of 8 games from May 15 through Friday, its services hardly required during the team’s hot streak.

Not surprisingly, the Rally Cat wasn’t the brainchild of a marketing team think tank but a random, silly, immaculately conceived, spontaneous combustion between the boredom of a moment and the brazen of a creative madman.

Okay, this is complete Bull.

Peter Bull, that is. He’s the Angels’ entertainment and production manager who, during that May 15 game, learned from cameraman Sam Song that a cat was wandering on the fake grass near the batter’s eye at Angel Stadium.

Bull had Song capture some four-legged footage. Then associate producer Danny Pitts spliced Rally Cat into the Rally Monkey segments, which get aired when the Angels are tied or trailing after the fifth inning.

“So, when the team was flat, we had an opportunity, a perfect situation to try this out and see if it would get the crowd going then get the offense going,” recalled Bull. “I’m not even sure if this is going anywhere, but we’ll just see. We see on Twitter that people are starting to look for the cat.”

Unlike Bull. The whereabouts of the feral cat are unknown, though there have been several sightings reported by callers on Roger Lodge’s “Sports Lodge.” One said the Rally Cat lived near Panda Express in Anaheim.

Another claimed that Rally Cat was a part of a cat herd left to run wild at Angel Stadium to control a rat population. No team sources would confirm this food-chain theory.

“I have no idea where the cat is,” Bull said. “It’s not like we’re running around the ballpark with cages trying to track a cat down and sign it to an acting contract.”

Let’s see how the rest of this Rally Cat experiment goes. Anything that could give the Angels nine lives this season has got to be a good thing, right?

masmith@ocregister.com

Contact the writer: masmith@ocregister.com