It’s been two days since a black cat briefly halted play by dashing onto the field during a nationally-televised football game between the Cowboys and the Giants, and now people are blaming the cat for the Giants’ loss.
Sportswriters are leading the charge, writing about hexes and omens and jinxes, and dusting off the cat puns as fans share memes about the kitty’s dark powers of suckage. It’s a “cat-tastrophe!” Har har!
We’re here to state the obvious: The New York Giants suck regardless of the black cat. They sucked before the cat appeared, they sucked during the game, and they’ll continue to suck for the seven remaining games of the season.
You could say they’ve elevated it to an art, registering losing records in six of the last seven seasons.
On Monday night the Giants took a drubbing, losing to the mediocre Dallas Cowboys 38-17 at home and lowering their season record to 2-7. The cat’s break for freedom was the most exciting play of the game.
In other words, the cat wasn’t the cause of the losing, he was a symptom — horrified by his team’s play, he took flight and was desperately trying to find a way out of the stadium. We’re sure of it!
In the meantime, stadium staff still haven’t found the freaked-out feline, and while an anonymous team employee says there are some 300 cats living in and around the stadium, a team spokesperson says that number is closer to 30, according to the New York Post.
Some of the cats live in the bowels of MetLife Stadium while others live on the grounds of the adjoining Meadowlands race track. They’re descended from cats brought in “decades ago” to tackle a rat problem at the track and in the tunnels connecting the facilities, according to the Bergen Record.
The stadium’s owners pay to keep the cats fed and spayed/neutered, per newspaper reports, while staff at the complex care for the animals. Good on them.
Now the Giants look ahead to Sunday’s match-up with the Jets in an event affectionately referred to as the Toilet Bowl. The two New York teams are a combined 3-14 this year, but fear not — as they go head-to-head, one of them is guaranteed to come away with a win!
Pain In The Bud 
Wow I didn’t hear about this. I love when animals invade the field. It happens in baseball too. Then everyone always gets superstitious. Although in this case, with a black cat, I can see why!
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Yeah in baseball it’s almost always a bird or a squirrel, but the stadium where the Giants and Jets play is on a marshland with all sorts of rodential inhabitants, so the cats take care of that problem and live at the stadium permanently.
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“Toilet Bowl”. Best name ever!! Gave me a huge laugh. Thanks for that. Thankfully I live in Minnesota where a halfway decent team (Go Viqueens! Vikings for those not living in my house!!) resides. Maybe we’ll make it to the playoffs and beyond this year (not holding my breath on that one!)!
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I’m a fan of baseball and basketball, and blissfully unaware of almost everything that happens in the NFL, but here in New York it’s impossible to remain ignorant to the fact that both the Jets and Giants are terrible because their fans are always calling local sports talk radio to cry about it lol.
The Knicks stink too, so that only leaves the Yankees for us. Good luck to your Vikings!
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If the stadium cats are all spayed/neutered, how are there any descendants of the originals? I think the stadium staff may be fibbing.
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I’m guessing there are cats who inhabit the nearby swamps of the Meadowlands as well as the “stadium cats” who are the official mousers. That area is really weird: The stadium is in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around it except for the swamps, a huge parking lot, and the highway. Naturally there would be intermingling between the true ferals in the swamp and the stadium cats who are accustomed to people. Since it’s a no man’s land, there probably isn’t anyone keeping tabs on the ferals. I’m surprised overzealous birders haven’t complained.
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