The difference between "What is that?" and "Who are you?" Is terrifying

I've been living with my husband in that house for the last four years, we started working from home and adopted a cat, things were peaceful. His firm is actually from another state, and as he got up in the job he needed to travel to the firm. It started slowly, at first he would go for a couple of days, then less than a week, then for a whole week.

I was always fine by myself and the cat, but I started to notice new cats in the neighbourhood at night. It took me a long time to notice the cats would only appear when he was travelling.

Sometimes I would leave to meet friends and see a few cats by my sidewalk, chilling on the ground; I would get back home to find my cat staring at the doorway, I always imagined he was waiting for me or my husband to come back home.

The first time I started to notice the weird stuff my husband had been away for four days, I heard an odd meow coming from my living room. It was just my cat meowing at the front door, ignoring it, thinking he was just missing my husband, I went back to bed. Then I heard it again, louder, more painful. My cat was laying down, belly up, in front of the door. And he kept meowing. I believe it was around midnight when I rushed with my cat to the vet, only to come back home with a "He's totally fine," and a 100 dollars bill. I counted ten cats laying with their bellies up on my sidewalk that morning. 15 in the other day, 20 the next day.

And my husband finally came back home, everything was normal, the cats were gone, our cat was completely normal.

Then he left again. And the cats came back. It got to a point where my neighbour asked me what was going on, no answer to give.

That night I saw it for the first time thru my living room window. It was standing on the sidewalk with the cats, belly up, arms and legs moving slowly, as it was playing with a fly or something, so skinny I could almost see its bones and the greyish skin.

Trying to not make a sound, I locked all doors and called the cops, they came quickly, but the thing and the cats were gone. They told me some stories about "crackheads" in the city. When I told them about the cats one of the officers actually wanted to take a look around, maybe I had some dead bird in my garden. But nothing, no smell, no dead bird, and that night, no cats.

In the morning, my cat was missing. Calling my husband I told him everything was going on, he was worried, he could tell by my voice that I was in shambles, so he decided to get the first plane he could find, arriving in the next morning.

I spent the whole day looking for my cat in the neighbourhood, biting my nails to the point of bleeding. Knocking on every door, asking everyone about him, but no one had seen him.

Trying to make the time pass, by 8 PM I was in bed, forcing my eyes closed, hoping to God my husband would come home soon.

Around midnight I heard the meow again. So, so painful, filled with despair. That's when I realized it wasn't my cat. I had no idea what to do, it was not possible to call the cops on some weird cat, and my husband wasn't even on his flight yet.

Taking all the courage I could manage and going to the living room, I saw the eyes in the dark. Big, round, yellowish eyes, looking at me thru the living room window. It wasn't a cat, the thing was tall like a human. So I ran.

Locked the bedroom door and started calling my husband, hiding within the blankets with the lights on. And the meowing started again. The thing would not shut up.

Every second, meow behind meow, getting louder, louder, louder. And closer.

I never felt pure panic before, completely frozen. The scratches on the door felt like inside my brain. The meowing was so loud now I couldn't hear my own breathing. The sound kept going and going and going. Meowing and scratching, crying.

The sunlight hit my face when my husband opened the door startled, tears running on his face. If it was pure shock or fatigue, I had no idea, but somehow the time had passed by. "What's going on?" He asked, his voice cracking, "Every door was open, there's blood everywhere, the bedroom door!" He pointed to the open door filled with deep marks from sharp nails. I didn't have a voice to speak, I had no idea what to tell him. "Something," I was able to mumble between tears.

I was able to calm myself down, fully aware it was not a bad dream, we decided to check the security cameras.

We called it a "thing" that first morning. We had no idea how long it had been rounding our house, as I had no guts to keep watching the tapes. It would walk on all fours sometimes and like a human other times. Long weird arms on the side of the body, with a long hairless tail whipping itself as the thing, kept watching our house, long, thin and sharp fingers scratching our doors and bleeding. My husband pucked on the floor. The thing had what I can describe as human ears stuck to the top of its bald head, where cat ears could be. In the footage we saw it "playing" with the cats, we saw it stealing our cat and taking him away. We had to stop watching, the thing, that thing, was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen. We didn't know what to say to each other. What did that thing want? Is it coming back? "What the f- is that?" I remember my husband saying non-stoppable.

We left the house that day, we gather the things we could and didn't look back. But curiosity and anger got the best of me, so every night I would look at the cameras, waiting to see if the thing would come back. After two weeks staying in a hotel, my husband and I would not talk about it, but he knew I was spending hours awake looking at the cameras. The thing never came back, but our cat did. The first second I got a glimpse of him, I left basically running, I didn't want to leave our cat to that thing.

My husband was shocked when I can back with our cat, but the same as I, relieved. We had just assumed he was dead, or at least we would never see him again.

That was my mistake. That night we got a phone call in the hotel. It wasn't one of those "just breathing" phone calls, it was a soft purr, like a cat, then "I am glad you found your baby," The voice was low, like a soft growl. "Who are you?" I asked, my heart racing in my chest. "My name is Kitty."

I shoved the phone to the other side of the room before listening more. We left again that day, to another hotel, then another one. Our cat died suddenly after that, no vets could tell us why.

We never got another phone call and we moved closer to my husband's job. I still check the security cameras every morning, and after realising our cat's body was stolen from his grave and the cameras didn't catch who did it, we installed a better security system.