Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding? And Other Crimes - S3 E19 Doggy Bag - Part Five

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

It all ends today*. It's time to chase down the last two remaining leads in our frantic mission to get justice for João; Ana from the Slovenian chain, and Joanna from the Dutch chain. Will they lead us to the source of the lie or to to João's parents?A shocking confession from a superspreader reveals how his fake story reached millions. And to close the case, we launch a social experiment designed to rewrite the future of this legend. We didn't think it would end like this but here we are...The next case opens on 12th March.Support us on Patreon http://patreon.com/whoshatontheflooratmyweddingFollow us on Instagram @whoshatontheflooratmywedding for case evidence and behind-the-scenesSound design by @juanthummler*for now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before we get into this episode, we have an announcement to make. We have officially launched our very own unqualified detectives club on Patreon. If you love our show and you want to become friends with us, come and join us. You'll get access to our detective chat room, live Q&As and exclusive bonus content, such as the video of me interrogating Hank from season one. When I physically threatened him. What's happening? verbally threatened Tim.

Do you love your girlfriend? I do very much. What would happen if she was to just suddenly disappear? That's all on video. And you can detect his bad body language. Plus, I am apparently going to be strapped up to the USB military edition lie detector for the very first time. And you get to ask the questions. Strap that bitch up.

So sign up today at patreon.com slash who shut on the floor at my wedding. Helen? Will Helen join? Doubt it. We'll probably have to pay her, to be honest. Previously on Doggy Bag. What have we got ourselves into? 122 years ago, a legend was born. There is an article from the New York Times, again, starts with journalism.

1904. It is based in New York, that crime. The title was, Man trying to hide dead cat, accidentally gifts stranger a feline surprise. 1933. It's a story that begins as a dead cat being stolen by thieves in an American store. The shoplifter had apparently taken her loot to the telephone booth, opened it, caught a glimpse of the dead cat, and dropped to the floor dead from a heart attack. 1980s.

A wild bobcat. No, it doesn't. It does. It becomes a story about a wild bobcat in a suitcase. This is ridiculous. It's outrageous. Then we get to South Africa. Suddenly, people spilled out of the vehicle and ran into the bush, and following them was,

this very sleepy looking leopard. Which then becomes about a monkey in a suitcase, which then becomes about a snake in a suitcase. Who's putting a snake in a suitcase? And then a little porcupine in a suitcase variant crops up. But people tell them as true stories. When you say this really happened to me, then people really pay attention.

And now we enter a very, very fruitful post the World Wide Web being open to the public and their story spreading exponentially. 2003. There's this college student and she's dog sitting for her friend who was a very old great day. From 2008. She comes back one evening and stuck died. Gets the bag from her, wrestles it off her and jumps off the train, assuming that there's super expensive DJ equipment in the bag. They were walking up and down from the Lizzie and in front of a Gucci store, the dog died. The dog started imploding.

In front of the door of the Louis Vuitton shop, the dog just collapsed. Two thousand and twenty-five. Suddenly the dog died and it was in front of a Prada store. And one of the guys just grabbed the Louis Vuitton back and drove away. So they entered a restaurant and ordered a schnapps. People are localizing the details of this case, as we've seen from Disseldorf. It only makes a good story when it's local and close and a couple of houses. handshakes away. That is what makes it an interesting story.

122 years of speculation, of storytelling, of spreading, and it never stopped, because no one wanted it to stop. But even the best stories come at a cost. Doggy Bag has been a journey, a struggle, a sick obsession, and it all ends today. We will determine whether the special doggy bag variant is real, whether a version of Jewell, true. existed. By chasing our final two leads, Joanna? So no, I do think it's like a fairly high percentage of it being true. And Anna.

Actually, I believe her. I don't think she's the kind of person who would make something up in this way. We will interrogate Alex Keating, the man who went on a massive American podcast and told his version of the story as truth. Throws me into the street. He puts his feet in front of mine so I fall. picks up the bag runs away. Will he confess to lying?

And finally, we will answer the question, how does this story end? And I'm worried that we're going to try and shut it down once and for all. Is that what we're going to do? My dream for this is to perpetuate it in a way that we can track very clearly to benefit us. A new variant.

So I think between us, we get to decide the future of this story. This is Doggy Bag, the finale. Before we get into this episode, we have a shout-out for one of our special Patreon fans. His name is Franklin and he is the winner of our first ever shout-out roulette. Well done. And he's got a message for his friend Aron. Aron has just moved to Rhode Island and he wants to make sure that Aron is not too cold up there.

After treking down Tony, after issuing one last desperate plea. Tony, we really need to get in touch with Johanna. We think she might be closer to the dog owners than we originally thought. He came through with the goods. Oh my God, Lauren. Johanna just responded. She's willing to talk to us. It's time.

Time to finally speak to Joanna. There was a family and the family had planned a trip to Paris. And this family had a dog. The dog was a bit old and a bit sickly. And so they couldn't really leave it with people or bring it to like a dog hotel or something like that. So they brought the dog to Paris, and when they were walking around Paris, on the Champs-Elysé, basically the dog just passed away. They happened to be in front of the Louis Vuitton store.

Are you sure you didn't tell Tony? Are you sure you didn't say Chanel? I'm very sure I did not say Chanel. What I got was Chanel. It was never Chanel. A hundred percent positive with Chanel. I will forgive him because he's finally helped us. He's being nice to us now, so we'll be.

will be nice to him, but yeah, it is noted that he lied to us multiple times. The Louis Vuitton store workers, like, I'll give you guys a bag so you can, you know, put the dog in it and carry it away. And walking around, and then someone on a scooter comes by and it snatches the bag from their hands, presumably thinking that there's some kind of expensive Louis Vuitton item in there, and that's the end of the story. Wow. Okay.

And does your girlfriend will speak to her? We need to speak to her. Does she feel that she knows the person whose dog died? No, I don't think so because I heard it from my girlfriend, who heard it from one of her friends, who again heard it from someone else. Oh my God! So this friend who my girlfriend heard it from is Norwegian.

I know you guys have already been around the world, but yeah, she was from Norway, and she heard this story from a Norwegian friend, and she would be happy to talk to you guys. Oh, you've already cleared it with her? Yeah. Oh, I love it. Let's go straight to Misha. Let's skip your girlfriend. Yeah, your girlfriend's off the hook.

Bloody Norway. Norway, oh my God. I didn't think it was going to skip countries again at this stage. It's become like this disease that is taking hold of Europe. And now he just added in another infected country. I'm so sorry. When you told Tony this story in Paris, yes.

He wasn't the only person that was there when you were telling the story. Yeah, that's right. One of our other friends were there, so we were with the three of us. I actually talked to that friend this past weekend, and she was like, oh yeah, I also don't think I told that many people, to be honest. So we both think that Tony is the cause of this in the Netherlands. Oh, Tony's the biggest spreader. He's the super spreader.

Did you tell anyone that was German? Not that I remember. Tony's just assumed that you've gone and told everyone that you went to the international school with, and two of those people were German. He's just making some major assumptions about how much you want to spread the story. I think he's projecting. I think it's guilt. He's responsible for what happened after Yohanna told him,

and he's realizing the weight of his responsibility as a journalist spreading this potentially not true story around literally the whole of Europe. Let's try and speak to Misha. But if Misha bloody gets on that call and says it's a friend of a friend of a mother, of a hairdresser, of a boyfriend, of a whatever, we're shutting that shit down. We can't go further. Misha is the final person we should speak to. And the Slovenian lead that we're still chasing.

It all hangs on Misha. If Misha heard this story before November 2023, she's therefore the top of this whole pyramid and the buck will stop with her. So it all hangs on Misha. Welcome Misha. Hello, Misha. Hi, nice to meet you both.

I am calling in from Oslo, Norway. We feel we're really close to getting to this dog owner now because we've been investigating this case for about three months now in total, and it's ridiculous. So we're inching closer to the dog owners. Victoria sent me a message saying, messaging you, saying, when did you hear the story? And she just came back saying 2022.

And I went, oh my God, that means you. you're now above the Slovenian line of this, that places you at the top of this whole chain internationally for us. Unfortunately, I think Victoria's wrong. Victoria's wrong. About what? About the date. I'm pretty sure I heard it in December 23. No. No, Misha, no. It was the person who told me, told me at a bar when we were celebrating the fact that I had handed in my thesis and I handed it in in December of 23. Oh my God. That is literally our hope dashed.

We've got one person called Luca who heard the story in November 2023. So we're now getting really close between you and Luca. We're a month apart. So these chains might actually be linking up. But we thought we could just forget the Slovenian side because they're being really slow at getting back to us. And we're like, brilliant. We'll just skip that to Misha, who's,

way like a year ahead, but now we are crestfallen. I'm actually starting to get sick of this. It's just failure after failure. And I know it's not your fault, Misha. Congratulations on your thesis, by the way. But it just pisses me off every time we think we're getting somewhere. It's just embarrassing at this point. We should have just dropped it bloody months ago.

It's embarrassing. It's not. You're catching us on a bad day, bad month. This is really at the end of a very unfruitful investigation. And so we're grumpy. So I heard the story from a friend who was also a co-worker. We worked at the same university. And she heard it from another coworker.

I know who he is, but I don't know him personally. So this other co-worker, he heard it from his mother. And she heard it straight from the source. But after listening to your podcast and hearing everyone say, they're like two handshakes away, I'm not really sure. if I can trust any of the information I got. So the mother knows the dog owner. Apparently.

Apparently. I don't know if I can do this again. No. Have you personally told this story to anyone else that is German or from Denmark? I'm pretty sure I've told it to my German friend. Yeah, but no Danes. Where does the German friend come from? Munich.

Munich. I think that is actually your responsibility that you told this friend who's based in Munich because they're having a good old field day over in Germany. Misha told her German friend the story. A woman based in Munich. Do you know any German podcasters? Well, my German friend who's from Munich used to make podcasts. After this Munich-based ex-podcaster hears the story from Misha,

a version of it appears on a German podcast. She just walked in the city's centre of Munich Suddenly the dog died And it was in front of a Parada store Coincidence We potentially tracked one connection But it's not the connection we wanted to track The Dutch chain that led us to Norway

Is officially dead Misha heard the story after it had been circulating in Slovenia So now it all comes down to Luca He heard the story before Misha Joanna Tony Marialine Peter Emma Heidi Giza Carol Leina, Katrina, Sarah, Janika Fiona and probably many more.

So now it's time to close this final chapter. This is what happens. Lucas sends a voice note to Karen. Hey, so I heard back from the friend whose mother told this story to another friend and it turns out that again she didn't hear from the people who it happened to but again it's two handchecks away.

Not off to a great start. But we promised we would do one final push. So let me outsource that to the assistant. Okay, Karen, call Laura, the next person in the Slovenian chain. Oh, hi. It's Karen from the comedy podcast. You apparently might be able to put us closer in touch with the dog owner. My friend told us this story, and she told us she heard this story at her male lady.

Karen calls me. Okay, I need to call Lauren now. I better pick up. It's not her best time of day, but let's give it a go. She probably hasn't had her coffee yet, so... Hello. I know this is not peak time to catch you in the day. I'm not sure you've warmed up to the day yet.

I've just called the next person in the Slovenian chain. You know, Anna, originally, we were trying to get hold of her boss. So I've just spoken to the boss's daughter. Her mum heard it from her best friend who happens to be quite a celebrated singer in Slovenia. The Slovenian singer heard it from her manicurist at a nail salon. The manicurist said she knows directly the dog owner, so it's her client's daughter, basically, who this happened to.

Karen. We don't know this yet because... Oh, okay. This is the... Because we need to go and get our nails done. Let's go get a manicure and brochure. What, in Slovenia? I've been interested London.

No. No, so it's a... The nail salon is in Slovenia. The client has a daughter that lives in London. The boss's daughter, she said to me, she said, to be honest, she's already asked this famous singer, and she's a bit of a storyteller, and she has not given, on purpose,

the details of the nail lady. And in the words of Laura, the boss's daughter, she said, I don't exist, you know, because my mom's best friend, she's a singer and an actress. So it was a really dramatic story, but then when we tried to investigate, she didn't give me any more detail. It all hangs on the nail lady. Yes, I think so too. But I hope this male lady exists. So, I think there is a very high chance we have found the origin of the woman.

this lie in Slovenia. The person who made it up the source. And that is the conclusion, quite frankly, I'm drawing if this singer again refuses to give the contact details and the nail salon, because why would you not, if it's true, why would you not try and help us out? Could the Slovenian singer be the creator of Doggy Bag? Laura chases the singer one last time.

We desperately need the details of the manicurist. The singer responds. The nail lady does not want to talk about it anymore. There, that's my final word on the matter. The Slovenian singer has firmly shut the door. But then immediately adds a recap of what she heard. The dog belonged to the client's daughter who lives in London. They took the dog on a train and went to Paris for a few days, and that's where he died.

We're assuming that that's all a lie. I'm questioning, really. I agree with Laura's gut feeling. I don't think the nail lady exists. There is no way you can get a dog on a tree. train from London to Paris unless it's a service dog. The story is false from the logistics side of it. Can I talk to you a little bit about this Slovenian singer?

I am not meant to know who this singer is. All we know that we're allowed to say is that she's a famous Slovenian chanson singer. I'm not going to say quite how I found out, but I did manage to track down who this singer actually is. will keep her anonymous but yeah let's just say I know who she is a Slovenian singer

known for her work in the genre of chanson it's a lyric-led French tradition full of storytelling and emotion a performer whose passion is to ignite the world through storytelling now stands at the beginning of our story

on a website she says her songs are the stories of the every man contemplating the hardships of the modern man So she's a storyteller, a performer. She's got her links to France. Her main inspiration comes from this French genre of song. She doesn't just sing stories. She chases them.

And then I went on her Instagram page and I found this photo of her from October 2020. Can you see that? Describe where she is. She's in France. She's in Paris. Her search for stories, letter to Paris

The translation of the caption is under the sky of Paris where inspiration is sought and always found almost immediately after that post the first known record of the doggie bag variant surfaced in Slovenia the timing is hard to ignore

she's literally just come from the location where this story happened she posted about being inspired and then literally a month after the story emerges for the very first time on record. Was this merely a coincidence? We still don't know. We don't know for sure whether the dog owners exist. Or have we found the person who fabricated this variant?

Is she capable? Is she creative enough to make this up? Was she inspired by France? Yeah. Is it possible that she made it up 100%. It is possible. And I just want to say hats off because what a story. We have finally reached the end of the line. with our doggy bag story, this is the end. This is officially the end of it. And that's a little bit sad. I don't know how I feel about it, to be honest. I mean, it's over for now.

We know that we're going to put a call out at the end of this episode. It's over for now. It's definitely not fully over. It's never going to be over until we find someone whose dog died like, Shwell. The doggy bag variant investigation is officially closed. However, if your animal has suffered a death and theft that mirrors the doggy bag case,

Contact us on Instagram at Hooshat on the floor at my wedding. If Jowel's owners are still out there, a memorial service will remain on the table. One final act of respect for our canine legend. But we will no longer entertain second-hand proximity. No more two handshakes away. No more maybes posing as leads. No more Slovenian manicurists who may or may not exist. It's only taken us five episodes to fully accept a hundred.

hard truth. Lies are possible. Fabricated stories exist and once they're told they don't need proof to spread. In fact, sometimes all they need is a massive podcast. It's time to introduce you to Alex Keating. Hello. Hi. Hi Alex. The man who went on the Armchair Expert podcast and told a version of this story as truth. It's not your first podcast radio. It's not. Nice to meet you. You too. Could you just tell us just this story of how you ended up going on armchair expert to tell a fake story? Man, like 15 years ago, I went on a first date with a girl.

And we went to breakfast and she told me that story. I was just blown away. I mean, it kind of rocked my world and I told it to every single person that I knew. I mean, I've told it probably 200 times. Never as my own, but like I tell it to high school kids and I tell it to friends and family. And it's just such a crazy story. I thought it was real. I legit thought it was real.

It's crazy how much that story had an impact on me because, like, I loved it. I was so pumped about that story. I love armchair expert. And so when they started doing the Armchair Anonymous, I was like, oh, I can get on that show. I'll just tell the story as if it happened to me. So I did it. And then I obviously, after the armchair episode, got crushed, like in the comments.

And everyone was like, this is fake, this is fake. I didn't know that. So obviously, I was super embarrassed. That's kind of what happened. So you thought it was real? I did. Where you crossed a little line as that you, Told it as my own.

That was definitely my fault. I never thought it was an urban legend until after that when I got crushed by all the listeners on the comments. What were the comments saying? Just like, this is fake. You got got. I've heard this story a hundred times. It's quite a rare variant that you've got of this story from all of the masses amount of research we've done. And this is the violent strand of this story where there's a pretty nasty mugging at the end of the story.

me over. Yeah. You're on the more violent extreme end of the scale. She had told me that she got pushed over and she was wearing a tank top and she was wearing shorts and she was like bleeding from like being pushed over into the street. So I use that in my version as well. What were your injuries? I just said like my knees were bleeding. Because again, it's a much better story if you have a little intensity in it. Oh yeah, you definitely need to get hurt. I want to invite you to the stand. in our virtual courtroom right now. I invite you to confess.

And we're going to invite you to stand up and own what you did on Armchair Expert. So please have the floor for your confession. Honestly, it was so embarrassing. So I'm happy to confess. I did believe it was true. But I told it as if it had happened to me and it definitely did not happen to me at all. But I felt as though it was such a good story. that I could pass it off as my own

and it would still work very well. I felt like I was doing the girl a little bit of justice because I was getting her story out there. But I'm happy to confess. It was absolutely wrong. I shouldn't have done it. So...

So Alex, are you guilty of lying? Yes, definitely. I'm Alex and I'm one of the super spreaders of this urban legend. I did it and would do it again. What would you like to say to all of the millions of listeners who listened to your story and believed it really happened

and then told it to their friends, and it just spread from there. Do you want my honest answer? Yes. I would say keep telling the story. It's great. You can have it, you can use it, make it your own, add weird stuff to it.

I think it's an amazing story, so I would keep telling it. Alex doesn't want this story to end, and neither do we. We don't want to stop it because everyone's having so much fun spreading this story and it's entertaining millions of people. Instead of trying to bury it, we're going to let it breathe.

We don't want to take that magic away from people. We cannot strip away the magic. We're going to keep it alive. And we've decided to launch a social experiment in this podcast episode and come up with a new, modern version of the original 1904 story. We're going to attempt to launch an urban legend. and see if we can spread it and see how far it goes. So everyone that listens to this episode is going to hold hands

and know that this is the moment that this story started. With an Urban Legends specialist, Evette, and members of our chain, we will construct a narrative designed to travel. This is an homage to the original 1904 Stolen Dead Cat Story, re-engineered for a modern world. This is the beginning of a new chapter of this story. We're talking to Katrina, the journalist who first heard the story in Denmark in 2025. We've decided to make her co-story writer, mostly because she's been acting like everything

we're doing is normal. Tell us why you want us to base this new variant in Copenhagen. Sell us your city. Bear in mind, this is going to last for another century, so this is a really important decision. Mm-hmm. Shouldn't be made lightly. And you're the spokesperson of Denmark right now, so you are speaking on behalf of Denmark.

Copenhagen needs to be known for a new thing than the little mermaid. And also like, oh, it's so expensive. Yeah, but have you heard the story about the cat? Location, Copenhagen, Denmark. What if there's a house somewhere and they have a rat infestation and they're trying to poison the rats, but a cat accidentally bites into one of the rats with the poison or eats the poison themselves and then dies? Animal victim, a cat.

So there are rats because I like the idea of having rats for some reason. We have a lot of rats in Copenhagen. It's a big, big, big problem. Cause of cat death, biting into a poisoned rat. What about is a chef working in a really nice restaurant in Copenhagen? Yeah. They realise they've got a bit of a rat problem. What if we find our oldest restaurant in Denmark to honour the original story from 1904?

A restaurant that was launched, that opened as close as possible to that? We can say one of the oldest restaurants. in Copenhagen. Yes. And what is that? There is this one from 7-20. That's too old. Yeah, have you got anything that was built in 1904?

That would be ideal. Come on, Katerina, you can do it. I like that there's the well-renowned element of this restaurant because it makes it more believable and there's more at stake for them to get rid of the rat problem. Location of rat problem in cat death, an old traditional restaurant in Copenhagen. The oldest regular customer is this older woman who has this beloved pedigree cat. And she lives around the corner and she goes this restaurant all the time. And that's the cat that ends up getting killed.

She's the local. She's the local. She's been going there for decades since she was 20. Yeah. And she's now table for one. 65. Table for one. Give me the usual.

Finest schnapps. I think she's kind of like a crazy cat lady, but not with a lot of cats. but there's one special one. So that's why she's not weird, but it's kind of sweet. I feel like you're taking this so seriously, and I really appreciate it. Owner of the cat slash victim of the story, an old lady. The poison makes sense. We just need to, we need to get a rat expert because we need to find out if,

no, we need to get a cat expert. We need to fact-check this story to make sure it's actually possible. We're not launching a story without understanding if the details actually ladder up. We just need a vet. We need a vet to talk about the most common causes of cat deaths. Yeah, we need to understand if a cat bites into a rat that's been poisoned. Will the cat die? Will the cat die?

Do you think actual murderers have this kind of brainstorm? I think so, yeah. But maybe not like digitally whilst being recorded. Annie eats the rat that's been poisoned. The local regular who's been going there for 40 years, the same sandwich every Saturday lunchtime. In memory of her deceased partner or something

like he used to go together. They used to go together and now he passed away and she still like keeps the routine. And he bought her that cat. And he bought her. I'm sorry. We're now discussing what type of bag the cat will be placed in after its death. So we've got a tote bag and they're quite generic.

The cat is too big for a tote bag. The cat? Yeah. With rigumortes. Do you not think? If you break the rigamortis, then it's soft again. What do you mean break the rigamortis? Like the spell? Is it a spell? No, no. If a cat

got rigamortis in the legs and you're like, I have to put it in this bag so I just snap it or you can just... Snap it! Yeah, if you broke it the owing. No, we're not assuming that the chef isn't breaking the legs of the cat. I'm not allowing this part

of the story. Your dark obsession with breaking the legs of a rigamortis cat is not going in this. Stop trying to make us get arrested. We're the ones who have to try and sell this story. Rigamortis sets in two to four hours after death and is fully developed after 12 hours. But after one to two days after,

the cat will start to rotten. And then the rigamortis is gone. Joe Millington did tell us this as well. Rigamortes is temporary. Katanah, I think you need to let the whole rigamortis point. I think you need to drop it. I think you've become a little bit obsessed and it might be our fault because we're taking you along this journey.

We're not going to talk about severing the legs of a rigmaris sitting cat. That's not, she understands she has to let that go. I have to let that go. Type of bag that the cat gets carried in, TBD. The story is almost complete. I think we've got the base of the story, which is phenomenal. We just need to iron out the details. I do think, to Karen's point, credibility is the kid.

so this story needs to be watertight. All of the questions that could be asked need to have already been answered. But before it's released into the world, it needs to be verified by a vet. So I've got an hour and a half to find a vet on a Saturday. We need a vet that specialises in Persian cats and rats. Okay, I need to, like, go and have, like,

I need to sit by myself in a dark room and just not say anything for about 20 minutes because this has just become so extreme. It's a lot to unpack. I'd love that we'd love that we'd. going to test it. We're going to try and launch our own urban legend. It's so cocky to think we have the power to do that.

So arrogant. I think the urban legend with the dog is outdated. Yeah, and I don't think we get an urban legend, a new one, that often. We need one. We need one. And we need to honour the original source of it. So

to that journalist who wrote that article in 1904, this is for you. Karen somehow manages to immediately find a vet. Hi, I'm Louisa. I'm a vet. I've worked as a vet for seven and a half years in Somerset in England. I graduated from Bristol in 2018. I'm a generalised GP small animal vet, so I mostly see cats and dogs, the odd hamster, guinea pig, rabbit. And that's me. Something urgent came up regarding a dead cat.

We need to kill a cat, a metaphorical cat, in a realistic way. Okay. Okay, the first question is, if a cat bites into a poisoned rat, will the cat get poisoned from the rat? Yes, it can do. It won't die instantly, though. There's certain rat baits of certain generations of rat bait. It will kill the rat. And if the cat eats the rat, we'll also kill the cat. So you have this accumulative effect of the toxin. So that's possible, yeah? Would it have to eat the whole rat, do you think, to kill the cat?

No, because the way these rat baits would work or do work is that, that they block your ability to clot. So the rat effectively like bleeds to death. And then the cat would just need to have a bit of the rat and then would also take on enough toxin that it would have to clot so it could also bleed to death. So it's a pretty terrible way to go, but it's very possible. And how long would it take?

And it would take a few days though for it to properly have an effect. Oh, we're giving the cat quite a slow, painful death. Slow, yeah. And when you say bleed to death, Are you saying that the cat would start bleeding? Yes. Sometimes you can see it visible to the naked eye with like nosebleeds or like vomiting blood. But typically it's bleeding internally.

So you might see blood in urine or it might develop a bloody effusion around its lungs so it can't breathe properly. Or a fusion around its organs. It's bad. Yeah, it's really bad. So yeah, it will bleed into cavities within its body. Oh no, I feel bad about this. We can't feel bad about this is fake. You've got to take the emotion out.

You're making a story, aren't you? Yeah, but we're making a story that has a really slow, painful death for the fictional cat. We always knew it was going to have to be a painful death for this cat to be realistic. What would you guess is the average weight of an adult Persian cat? About four kilos. What about a dead one? A dead one. Still four kilos.

Yeah, I don't know why you think rigamortes makes something heavier. Doesn't Rick and Mortis make the animal heavier? No. Just makes them solid. Yeah, but solid means heavy. No, but if you have like, what's the analogy, 100 kilos of bricks or 100 kilos of feathers are still 100 kilos. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll take this offline, Lauren. I'll give you in a science lesson. I don't think we will take this offline. We've got one chance with the vet. So you've picked up in a live animal that was a certain weight and then it's passed away, sadly. And then you've also picked it up when it's got rigormorous

and it's the same weight. Yeah, yeah. It's not that I don't trust you. I just want to make sure that I'm 100% certain. There could be like a subtle few grams difference. There you go. But it's not going to make a dramatic difference. I love that we've literally just met each other four minutes ago.

It's like, so let's talk about cat regamortes, shall we? So cat bites the poisoned rat. and it's died. When does the rigamortus sit in? How long have we got? Half an hour, maybe not even that long. It can be really quick. So do you think you could fit a dead

Regamortus cat in a tote bag? As long as, and this is where the poisoning works, as long as the cat's curled up to die, it goes into a rigamortis in whatever shape it finishes its life in. Oh, that's really helpful. Helpful that the kid kills up to die. We're now on a call waiting for our urban life. legend specialist to join.

When suddenly, Louisa the vet rejoins our call link with two very important points. It doesn't have to be a Persian, or does it have to be a Persian? Because if it doesn't, they're not, like, renowned for being the most like avid hunters. They're quite like, floofy, sit

on a cushion and be stroked kind of cats. Whereas if you went for like a ginger tabby cat, they are much more like feisty and would like actively hunt the rats. Why is it ginger? Why is it specifically ginger? You're going triggered by the ginger. Yeah, why does it have to be ginger? Are you saying that ginger's are more feisty than other creatures? No, not at all. Ginder tabby boys are definitely the

feistyest, in my opinion. And the cutest, but yeah. I was going to do some research because there are lots of different generations of rat baits, so I was going to find out specifically how long things take, just to make it really watertight. Could you send me a link with the best rat bait for this story? Sure. Yeah. I love the vet. I love that she's like, I'm just out for a walk, I've just had some thoughts. Why does it have to be ginger? Why is it a ginger tabby? Why can't it just be any colour tabby?

I just love that the conversations we've had this morning are going to waste thousands of people's time all around the world. So if we take another three minutes to change the odd detail and make sure it's right, then let's take that time. It's time to meet our Urban Legends Specialist. Honestly, you're about to hold hands with us and go on quite a roller coaster for this case. in the mental headspace to go into a weird washing machine of truth and mistruths?

I'm here for it. Yeah, so I'm Dr. Andrea Akita. I'm a folklorist and a professor at East Carolina University. I study urban legend and belief, and I also like to look at the supernatural as well. Amazing. A folklorist. Isn't that awesome? Isn't that so awesome?

That is epic. I don't even know where to begin. We're starting with the doggy bag variant in telling Andrea all about. Juel and rips the bag out of the hands and heads off into the Parisian sunset with a dead dog instead of an expensive bag. Are you familiar with it? Yes, I'm familiar not with that, but with variants of that. So I love you've got a cat on your lap. It's very, very relevant for this story. So we're inviting you to partake in the world's first urban legend social experiments right now on this podcast. So we have traced back this story.

as far back as 1904 in an old New York Times article. Are you aware of? Yes, I am. Folklers have looked into this, especially a folklorist named Jan Brunband. He actually found that version from 1904, the New York Times. So I knew about that. I had read this, I think, in grad school. That is probably even older than that,

because that's the first one we know in print, right? So it probably existed in the oral tradition even before that. And there's different variants of this, everything from, you know, the cat has died at home and it's somebody that lives in an apartment so they don't really have any place to take it, but they have a friend that's willing to bury it on their estate or in their suburban home or something in their backyard, someplace with a little bit more land. And either the bag gets stolen on the subway or it gets stolen some other place. Would you say that this is the most famous biggest urban legend in the world? I mean, it's definitely one of. It might not be the biggest,

but it's definitely a very popular one. We ask Andrea whether she believes the 1904 story, which didn't involve theft, has any connection to the doggie bag version, where stealing plays a central role. It's definitely a very similar story, and what ends up happening is people probably read that and thought, like, that's not what should happen to this guy.

So they start to change the story, and that's what happens to all of these kinds of stories, is if they just don't resonate for some reason, people will make changes, And they'll say, oh, you know, I don't think that guy, that guy was bad. You know, he doesn't deserve, you know, free food for this. So they change the narrative. And that happens all the time.

That's why we have all these variants, right? The narrative changes a little bit over time. The other really interesting part of our story is this Louis Vuitton strand has all been shared by journalists. Yes. Mm-hmm. Right? That is very common with urban legends. They get told as if they're real news and they're not.

When people say like, oh, you can't trust the news anymore, I'm like, you never could. Because there are constantly urban legends in it. People have studied this for a long time and looked at like, why. And it's because they're good stories. Like, of course, people want to use them because they're good stories. And it seems like something you can track down. And your journalistic duty should be to track down that original source, but that's not what everybody does. What we thought we would do as the end of this investigation is to rewrite and honor the original story that we've

come across from 1904 and modernise it. So come up with a completely new chapter of this urban legend. And as our podcast, anyone that listens to this, we say, go out and spread this like it's truth. And we just see how far it can get. Yeah. Awesome. In, you know, five years time, it'll be like someone in Australia is telling this exact version like it really happened. Yeah. So we need your help. We've written a story. So we've got a watertight story as far as we're concerned. that we're going to now present to you and what we need is your help to try and make sure this is as shareable

in terms of what the criteria and the components are that makes urban legend very successful because we want this to go as wide as we possibly can to track down as a social experiment if humans just can't help themselves to a spread this mistruth but also if the moral of the story is going to change

and we're going to have a repeat of what happened in 1904. Yeah, all right, let's do it. We present our brand new urban legend to Andrea, which we will soon share with you listeners. And like a school teacher, she grades it. Okay, yeah. Feel free to be very aggressive. If you think we're not doing well, you need to tell us.

Okay, I will tell you what I think, and if it's a good one or not. So what really works with that story is the detail. That all adds to its credibility. But we didn't nail the ending. You might want to make that a little more clear. It needs something else. It needs like a good... Twist, but it's not interesting enough and there's no satisfying ending.

Yeah. If we're being brutal, we have to be. Being really real with this, Andrea, do you think this isn't going to fly? At this point, it doesn't have a good enough ending. It needs that punch at the end and it doesn't have it yet. We ask for specific feedback on the male ginger cat. And yes, it would be a male. Almost all orange cats are male.

Oh. Yeah, there are females there, but they're less likely. It makes sense for you, Lauren, because you're quite testosterone heavy, on you? Quite a deep voice. Maybe that's where it comes from. my pack hit? We're only going to go out with this. We're going to launch it publicly once you've given us 100% A-star best marks. I'm into it. I love it. One week passes. We're back. We'll take it paragraph by paragraph right. You start. Wait, where is it?

Scroll down to the Copenhagen version. The version with the injuries phobic. Yeah, okay. And I've left your question. Wait, I'll need to zoom in. Yeah. So panicky. No, no. I'm relaxed. Okay, I am a relaxed too. Okay.

Andrea, are you ready? I'm ready. Story time is about to begin. So my sister has this friend who's a chef and an owner of one of the oldest traditional restaurants in Copenhagen. It's an upmarket place that serves sandwiches and schnapps. And there's this regular customer who lives in the apartment above the restaurant. She's an elderly lady and she comes in for lunch, every Thursday.

She used to come in with her husband, but he sadly passed away a couple of months ago. When she comes in, she only talks about one thing. Her beloved ginger, tabby, cat. She shows photos of him to the waiters as they serve her, and she's constantly giving them updates. The chef and the staff love her

because she is an absolute icon. Occasionally, the cat is spotted roaming around on the restaurant's terrace, because she lives just above, and the staff occasionally feed it little scraps of food. But this restaurant, the building is really old and it's recently been experiencing a bit of a rat problem. Not many, but enough for the chef to start panicking about reviews or gossip.

So late one Sunday, when the restaurant's about to close for a few days, the chef stays behind after his shift and he lays down rat poison. He locks up hoping nobody ever finds out. A couple of days later, he comes back to the restaurant. Good news. Three dead rats. Problem solved. Or so he thinks.

Until, two days later, he comes back. He goes out to the back where the bins are. And there he sees a ginger tabby cat, motionless on the ground. Her ginger tabby cat. The same color. The same little collar. The same cat. She shows photos of everything.

Thursday, but it was dead. Around its mouth was a pool of vomit. It had been poisoned. The chef's heart just stops. He knows immediately that this cat ate one of the rats that he poisoned. So he has essentially killed her cat.

So he panics. There is absolutely no way he can tell her. He can't be the man who just killed the only companion she has left. He has to get rid of the cat. And quickly, because the old lady's window looks right at where the dead cat is currently lying, motionless on the ground. So he runs back into the restaurant to find something to quickly wrap the cat in.

He finds a roll of cheese paper and he goes back and wraps the cat in it and brings it inside out of sight. But now he has an unhygienic dead house cat in the kitchen of his fancy restaurant. He needs to get rid of it before the other staff arrive. He tells himself he'll give the cat a respectful burial in his garden. He's obviously feeling guilty and his house is only 15 minutes away which is just two stops on the subway so he looks around quickly for a bag to put it in but he can't find anything in his restaurant a bin liner no that's not going to work a suvied bags they're transparent not big enough then he remembers the day before he went into town to buy his wife a really special birthday present a pair of Gucci trainers the ones

she'd always wanted and he had the bag with the trainers in his office in the restaurant and he was putting it there to wait until her birthday. That shoebox came in a large, sturdy, red Gucci bag, and it would be the perfect size to put the dead cat in. He goes into his office, he takes the shoebox out of the bag, he slips the dead cat inside that's still in the cheese paper, and he dashes out of the restaurant holding the Gucci bag. He's walking towards the subway stop.

And suddenly, a man on a scooter spots the Gucci bag. He speeds up on a scooter, and he swipes it from the chef and darts off down the road. And that is the story of how a thief stole an elderly lady lady's dead cut. The end. I love it. You would both get A's in my class for sure.

Thank you. I feel like you guys put a lot effort into this. Well done. I am happy. All you need is someone grading you. Well, exactly. And I got an A plus, so suck it, Karen. Oh God, it feels good.

Can you make us a little certificate? Yes. Okay, so the next step from our side to end this episode and to begin the launch of this new variant of this urban legend is we're going to invite a select group of people to join us on a Zoom call and we're going to brief them on this new story. And they're going to be like our undercover spies that start spreading this story in various different countries.

Love it. We would love your input on the best kind of people to have in that room. I think it's really funny if we can get journalists on board to start spreading it line. No, journalists would be perfect. I think that's great to get some journalists in there. There's a million different factors when it comes to spread. Usually it's about people's social groups. So if you can figure out like people with really broad social groups or people that, you know,

would be able to tell the story in like a bunch of different places, that would also help. There's going to be little changes that happen as it spreads. That's normal. So it might not look identical to the original story as it spreads around. People might add to it. They might take away parts of it because it's all about what hits. We might lose some detail. That's okay. Also, you're saying we shouldn't be too hard on them when they recite the story back to us and they fuck up some of the details. How will you help us track hearing about this story and how it spread? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I mean, I definitely have. European colleagues that I can check in with and see if any of them have heard it. So that'll be

something a little more local. I mean, we could see how long it takes to get back to the US. Like with the way travel works now, it could be pretty fast. You never know. What's the biggest folklorist get together, like the biggest conference or whatever where you talk about this? So it would either be the American Folklore Society's annual conference, which is amazing. But there's also one that's called CF. It's basically the European Folklore Society. society. This is our ambition within the next two years to get mentioned at the AFS conference. Or the CF. Yes. Yeah, that would be about as good as a good. And there's like 700 to 1,000 people that attend that. So it's a big conference. Do you think we'll get invited if we do this?

I mean, you could. Yeah. Late October. October, 2026 is the time. So we'll walk in and they'll be confetti because we'll be like, we'll just be heroes. Oh my God. They're going to honor rest with some sort of award. I'm going to put that on my vision board. There you go. What's the best outcome of this for you professionally? The absolute best outcome is if one of my students walk into my classroom and be like, have you heard this story? That would be chef's kiss, perfect. Okay, we need to contact. Can you give us a list of all your students, their names, addresses and phone numbers and we'll make that heaven. Wish us luck. We will report back how our briefing goes. Yeah, we'll keep an eye on it and see if it starts to get around.

So stressful. I don't want to be caught out lying. I'm just, well, we're getting other people to lie on our whole. It's a social experiment. We're not lying. It's an experiment. And it's actually approved by a folklorist,

so we have official approval to move forward and lie. Yes. This is the point of no return. The final step in our grand plan. Our storytelling spreaders are on the call, and once they are briefed, there's no turning back. Present on the call we have Yanika, the person who first brought this case to our attention.

Katrina, our Danish journalist, Alex Keating, the armchair expert super spreader. Fiona, our German friend who heard the story on a podcast and claims a pug died in front of a Prada store in Munich. And Felipeo, an Italian stand-up comedian. There he is. Welcome, Felipe. How are you? Yeah, I'm all right. I don't trust any of this, as you know. Who thinks we're trying to scam him. He had several reservations when Karen first made contact with him. You're very good at talking.

This could also turn out to be a hoax. You sound like chat GPT, you know? Like you're good at reinforcing whatever I say so that I feel more confident about myself through you. This is why the world is going to shit. It's because of people like you. Yeah. But it's fine.

Listen, you're very good at manipulating. So I want to ask you this. This phone call, what is it? exactly. What are we doing? What are we talking about? And is it actually real? I'm like, I'm lost in this gray area in which I, listen, I know that within all of this, somehow you're shitting me somewhere. I'm not. But that's fine. I'm literally not. I'm literally not. I promise you. Despite the potential scam, he's still said yes. Filippo thinks he's being scammed, which is understandable. You are all being scammed. You're all being watched and recorded for their own interests. Don't fall for it.

Yeah, that's true. No, no. We're all. We're all being scammed. We're all being watched and recorded for it. You are. No, no, we're open about that. Filippo is the only one that hasn't really listened to our podcast. I don't want to, I never will. So it will all be revealed why you have been specially selected to be on this call. This all began because we started investigating a story about a dead dog that was stolen. Yannika swore she was two handshakes away from the actual dog owners. So we thought it was quite a clear crime that we needed to investigate.

We decided to take that on. We then followed her chain of contacts that started with a friend, then led to a colleague. This story has been circulating in some shape or form for the last century. Today, we are going to make urban legend history. The challenge is to see how far we can spread this new version of the story. That is our challenge today, and you are the people that we choose to do that. Congratulations. Any questions?

I feel honored. Are you ready for the new variant of this story? Yes. The new doggy bag. So my sister has this friend who's a chef. We present the new variant to our storytellers. And that is the story of how a thief stole. An elderly lady's dead cat.

What do you reckon? I love it. You could say it's watertight. I don't know if you would, but you could. You could, you could. I have told the doggie bag story to quite a few people. But, I mean, I have a choir that I'm in of 190 people. I can, they don't know the dog stories.

I can tell them the cat story. Yeah, I haven't told the dog story to that many people. So I can push the cat story. My only concern is because the dog story is an urban legend that they have heard it before. It's normal to feel nervous when you're at the beginning of making urban legend history. I'm sensing the nerves and that is okay. Do you want me to tell it to everyone I know or just like large groups? Every single person you know and large groups. Cool. How much poetic license do we have? As much as you can hear in our investigation, things change. I mean, the store's going

to change. The breed of the cart can change. If you do change the store though, I would urge you to Google that shop in Copenhagen because we have actually done that. And we've checked in Gucci does sell shoes in Copenhagen. So it's essential that the details remain watertight, but if you want to feel comfortable telling the story, then you absolutely should change details. Not to get competitive, but to get competitive, because we've got the best storytellers in the world on this call. But Janika here's already quite boldly said, well, I've got a choir of how many people? 190 people. That's quite a big starting point. What else we've got? I feel like, Felipe, you've got a pretty

good potential to spread this story as a stand-up comedian. When we finish this, I have to go to a podcast for an Italian comedian who's quite well known, so I'm already going for it. Great. You're going to tell it on an Italian podcast, amazing. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I am on this Thursday going to do a quiz show on Danish TV. I will be meeting a lot of Danish celebrities who will then tell the story and tell the story and tell the story and tell the story. So quite important people, I would say.

Oh my God. I'm actually extremely impressed. I'm so impressed. Okay, I've got some questions. What was the chef buying for his girlfriend? Gucci shoes. Who killed the cat, Yanukkah? The chef.

Can you elaborate? He put the red poison down. The cat ate the rat that was poisoned and therefore the cat died. Fiona, what kind of restaurant was it? In Copenhagen, I don't know what kind of restaurant. It was in Copenhagen. Katarina? Yeah, old open sandwich snaps kind of OG Danish restaurant. Philippa, can you describe the dead cat?

The dead cat was just as it was when he was alive. It was red, ginger. How could you tell how it died? What do you mean, how could I tell? When the chef found the dead cat, how did it know the cause of death? Were there bits of rat in the vomit? You can see there was a tail. I quite like that, yeah.

The bits of rat had the poison inside. Oh, yeah, like foam. It was foaming. He was frothing. I think if the cat is like frothing at the mouth. The belly is swollen. There's a bit of a tail coming out and the froth. Yeah.

Yeah, you can embellish that moment as much as you would like. A bit of bile and some kind of ginger froth as well. just to match the ginger cat. I wouldn't say that us gingers, when we froth, we don't froth a different color to the rest of you. But you're no cat.

You're a human. Yeah, I wouldn't say the cat froth's ginger. Necessarily. I just, that would be my only feedback to that point. What color? Unless there was some sort of hairballs, the cat, you know, legs. Yeah, yeah.

So there could be a... Of the hair. The herbal could be grey because it's the rat's hair instead of ginger. What colour are the rats is grey? Grey. I just feel incredibly confident listening to all of you right now. I love it. In about 10 months, you guys will know that the story travelled around to the convention of urban deadlings.

Yeah, and the best thing is we won't have to do any work because we've just given you our jobs now. So like our work ends today. How are you going to keep track of that? Yeah, you keep asking it. Yeah. I don't. The best we've got is the conference next October. So that brings us to the end of this really weird call.

It's the weirdest call I've ever been on and I organized it. So I'm sorry but also very grateful for all of your contribution. And I can't wait for the future to unfold with this story. Don't be sorry. I think it was quite nice. And Philippa, if you could just send your bank details and all of your full address. You already have my social security number. Yeah, Philippo, just want to let you know that I'm a princess from Saudi Arabia

and you've actually just come into a bit of money and I will just be needing a copy of your passport. I knew this was going to be my lucky day. And then, yeah, you'll get that money. Well, there we have it. A new story has been born tonight. The next chapter of this story begins today. but it's not ours to write. What happens next rests in the hands of you, our precious listeners.

The story is yours now. Take it and let it loose. Unleash it into the world. Let the Copenhagen Dead Cat story travel from one voice to the next. And if you do set it in motion, let us know. Message us on Instagram at WhoShat on the floor at my website. wedding. Tell us when you told the story and how many people believed you, we'll mark your role in the birth of this brand new urban legend, because every legend begins the same way

with someone daring to repeat it, and you are that someone now. The journalist that wrote that very first article in New York Times in 1904, if he reported on a real, real, real incident that happened. What message do you want to give to that journalist right now? Well, thank you because I think it entertained a lot of people and gave the chance to put your own spin on it. So I think that's fantastic. What if the alternative reality is the truth

that that journalist made it up? Everyone globally has invested in a lie for well over a century. And it's all the result of that very first journalist. Well, that's a bit outrageous to publish a story that's not true. But it has the same outcome. So in the end, it doesn't matter if it's true or not.