The police in Saxony-Anhalt are warning of an internet trend in which people wearing cat costumes and red and white hats scare or stalk others. In Coswig (Anhalt), a person dressed in this way was seen several times and a report had been filed, the Dessau-Roßlau police station said on X. That could be a criminal offense. The agency advises not to participate, not to scare or stalk anyone, not to share content on social media and not to post personal information as a possible “target.” Anyone who is threatened or persecuted should call 110.
According to the Wittenberg police station, on September 19th around 11 p.m., a person in a cat costume waited in front of a residential building in Coswig for almost half an hour. A resident felt threatened. The police are investigating after numerous videos, some with over a million views, caused a stir on Tiktok. The police list threats, coercion and stalking as possible crimes. Anyone who publishes names or places of residence as targets must also expect legal consequences.
In Zerbst, a few kilometers away, the alleged sighting of a person in a cat costume with a hat triggered a police operation at the Ciervisti secondary school. This was reported by the “Volksstimme”. Corresponding pictures had previously made the rounds in the city. Whether they show real sightings is an open question. The Dessau-Roßlau police station is now warning of the trend with an AI-generated image.
The character recreated with the costume comes from the 1957 children's book “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss. The appearance, which is now spreading widely on the Internet, goes back primarily to the live-action film version from 2003, which was released in Germany under the title “A Tomcat Makes Theater”. Mike Myers played the cat in the fur costume.
The worrying trend of stalking other people in cat costumes and scaring them is not new. But with the sightings in Saxony-Anhalt, it has now spread to Germany for the first time. The trend has its origins in a film meme from early summer: On June 30th, according to the website “Know Your Meme”, the Tiktoker Daletok published the scene from the 2003 film adaptation in which Mike Myers dances as a tomcat.
The caption mocked teenagers who dance hard at prom only to overdose two weeks later. The happily dancing cat in the short video stood for one such reveler. The clip was accompanied by the dark piece “Gats” by Susumu Hirasawa from the anime “Berserk”. Within a week, the post received more than 4.4 million views. The video has now been deleted.
At the beginning of July, the dancing cat developed into a meme when other users began to pick up on it: They edited together film scenes in the style of horror films or supposedly found footage material. But it didn't stop there. Further videos are said to show the human-sized cat with the red and white striped top hat getting up to mischief in an Irish neighborhood in Wexford and chasing a woman.
Similar motifs with different locations followed, some in the style of door camera shots. On August 20, Irish police confirmed that the images had been created using AI, the Irish Mirror reported. There was also a fake police report circulating about sightings in the Meadowhall area in Sheffield, England.
At the beginning of August, the original costume from the film was added and further fueled the trend: an auction house put it up for auction, influencer Natalie Reynolds bought it for a total of around $25,000 and then claimed on her Instagram account that it was one of the most cursed props in film history. According to her, Mike Myers' soul is trapped inside (even though the actor is still alive).
In the USA, the trend took another turn when posts used the figure to make threats against schools and individual students, as the police portal “Police1” summarizes. The posts said that the character would next target named students or appear at a school. Several young people were arrested. Some schools then increased their security precautions as a precaution.
Now the cat with a hat has reached Saxony-Anhalt and is spreading fear and terror, especially among young people. It is unlikely that in Coswig, as in Ireland, this is a purely AI phenomenon. The case is not based on a picture, but on the statement of a local resident who claims to have met a real person in a costume. Whether everything happened like that and who was under the mask remains to be seen. For the time being, the police are relying on education and asking children and young people to talk to children and young people about the consequences of such “pranks”.
