Original Air Date: March 8, 1996
Starring: Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Vic Trevino
Directed by: Kim Manners

Cat Out of the Bag Alert!  This review contains spoilers for this episode!

Synopsis: An archeological team uncovers a sacred burial urn in South America and despite warnings from locals about a curse they transport it to a museum in Boston where people start turning up dead.

Bad Kitty: A rather forgettable entry in the X-Files series, the details aren’t really worth rehashing here.  Needless to say the curse is supposed to take the shape of a jaguar.  After another person goes missing, Agents Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny) end up searching in a sewer.  Something is watching them as they search for the missing body.

At one point Mulder points his flashlight and finds an orange tabby cat.

The cat runs away but is seen moments later, still watching them.

Mulder spots a large number of cats beneath the grating below them.  Suddenly a cat jumps out and attacks Scully, clawing at her face.  But this is actually just a pretty obvious fake cat puppet.

Cat Cattle Call: Cats start appearing, coming from all corners, jumping out into the sewers.

After running a while Mulder shines his flashlight through a wire mesh where countless cats have congregated.

One of the cats leaps up, startling him.

Mulder and Scully escape and Scully’s face heals remarkably quickly.  According to one account on IMDb both agents were supposed to be attacked by a large number of cats but the cat actors were too docile and pretty much wouldn’t do anything.  In fact a lot of cat screeching had to be added in post production to make it at least sound as if the cats are vicious.

Final Mewsings: They should have investigated the killer cat puppet.  That would have been a great episode!

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