LAST NIGHT:
I am sleeping. Around 1am, I wake up to the sound of my cat's water bowl being knocked around. No big deal. Sometimes she's hyper in the middle of the night and eats and knocks shit around. It's not the first time I've heard these noises.
Except then I look down, and my cat is sleeping at the foot of my bed!
If my cat isn't eating her food, that means something else is!
So I get out of bed and go to the top of the stairs. I listen, and sure enough, there is some kind of animal eating my cat's food. I walk slowly down the stairs to see what it is, but it must have heard me and scurried away.
When I get into my kitchen, I see that my basement door is open. My basement door is never open unless I'm going down there to do laundry. I leave it closed specifically because I don't want my cat going down there.
I shut the basement door and survey my house. I can't find anything, so I assume the animal must have run back into the basement when it heard me coming. My cat's food is all over the floor, and her water is completely gone.
I prop some heavy items in front of my basement door so that the animal can't get back into the kitchen. I clean up the mess, and I go back to bed.
Around 4am, I wake up again to the sound of bumping and scratching. The animal, whatever it is, is trying to force its way back through the door. It can't open it, however, and eventually it quiets down. Because it's such an awkward time of the night, I figure I'll try and sleep and deal with it in the morning.
TODAY:
I go into the basement to see if I can find the animal in question. I find a couple empty boxes that have been knocked to the floor, but otherwise I find nothing to indicate that an animal had been there at all.
Except this...
An old cat collar in the middle of the stairs. It's tough and worn, and it's covered in very old dust. No way it was being worn by a living cat.
So, I have concluded, after much thought and very little evidence, that I have a zombie cat in my house.
I am sleeping. Around 1am, I wake up to the sound of my cat's water bowl being knocked around. No big deal. Sometimes she's hyper in the middle of the night and eats and knocks shit around. It's not the first time I've heard these noises.
Except then I look down, and my cat is sleeping at the foot of my bed!
If my cat isn't eating her food, that means something else is!

So I get out of bed and go to the top of the stairs. I listen, and sure enough, there is some kind of animal eating my cat's food. I walk slowly down the stairs to see what it is, but it must have heard me and scurried away.
When I get into my kitchen, I see that my basement door is open. My basement door is never open unless I'm going down there to do laundry. I leave it closed specifically because I don't want my cat going down there.
I shut the basement door and survey my house. I can't find anything, so I assume the animal must have run back into the basement when it heard me coming. My cat's food is all over the floor, and her water is completely gone.
I prop some heavy items in front of my basement door so that the animal can't get back into the kitchen. I clean up the mess, and I go back to bed.
Around 4am, I wake up again to the sound of bumping and scratching. The animal, whatever it is, is trying to force its way back through the door. It can't open it, however, and eventually it quiets down. Because it's such an awkward time of the night, I figure I'll try and sleep and deal with it in the morning.
TODAY:
I go into the basement to see if I can find the animal in question. I find a couple empty boxes that have been knocked to the floor, but otherwise I find nothing to indicate that an animal had been there at all.
Except this...

An old cat collar in the middle of the stairs. It's tough and worn, and it's covered in very old dust. No way it was being worn by a living cat.
So, I have concluded, after much thought and very little evidence, that I have a zombie cat in my house.