Culture

The Zombie Apocalypse Has Arrived And People Are Surprisingly Chill About It

Wake up, sheeple. This is it.

by Meg Watson  29 January 2015

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Last week a tabby cat named Bart was tragically hit by a car in Tampa, Florida. After Bart was found on the street in a pool of its own blood, Bart’s owner Ellis Hutson grieved for his pet, buried the cat’s seemingly lifeless body in a nearby lot, then went on living his life.

Five days later, Bart was found skulking around a neighbour’s property with a broken jaw, severe facial injuries, and a dead eye. After spending 120 hours underground — just seven less than James Franco (or, more accurately, this guy) spent stuck under a boulder before amputating his arm, Bart hauled himself up from the grave and decided to live.

Now, after extensive surgery with the Humane Society‘s Animal Health Centre, Bart is recovering well and on his way back home within the week.

People are elated. The Humane Society have dubbed him ‘Miracle Cat’ and many online are championing Bart as a hero with the hashtag #zombiecat. When a common cat rises from the dead, digs his way out of the grave and finds his way back home, it really starts to put shit in perspective.

Now, as the news spreads and the term ‘Zombie Cat’ gets quickly adopted by not only regular Twitter users, but also respected media outlets, it’s hard not to be slightly unsettled. At first this seemed like an awful story; one where a perhaps negligent owner accidentally buried his cat alive. Yes, Bart survived the ordeal but with his horrible injuries, it’s pretty far from being a Cinderella story.

But now, the media’s all but confirmed it. This is the start of the zombie apocalypse.

Bart ain’t Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. He wasn’t trained by Pai Mei. We have multiple first-hand accounts that Bart was straight-up dead. “I saw him with my own eyes. I know he was dead. He was cold and stiff,” Dusty Albritton (the neighbour who found him) told ABC News. “All I knew was this cat was dead and Pet Sematary is real.”

Now we’ve wholly accepted that he has come back to life.

And we’re being surprisingly fucking chill about it.

Because the issue is obviously being played down by the NSA or Illuminati so as not to invoke a panic, here are some questions we’ll pose to get things rolling.

  • What kind of zombies are we dealing with here? Is this the rage virus or will we be able to defeat them with a slight jog or a soft push to the shoulder like the ones in The Walking Dead?
  • What caused this? Which of the theories from Cracked turned out be true, and does the brain mutation, neurotoxin or virus only affect felines or other species too?
  • Have they even tested if there are any ways for the disease to be transmitted to humans? Do we have to worry about being bitten by zombie cats or will it just be like that bit in 28 Days Later where the asshole bird infects the dad with human blood?
  • Do we know that zombie cat was underground that whole time or is it possible he was off feasting on human corpses before coming back for revenge on his owner?

Thank God (or whatever being you now need to make peace with) that you took all those Buzzfeed survival tests.

It’s on.