SCP-2949
Observable Televised Feline Migration
Connected to: SCP-796
SCP-2949
Special Containment Procedures
SCP-2949 itself is currently uncontainable due to its nature. Its manifestation is to be controlled via encouraging the phasing out of analogue television as an obsolete standard. Future appearances of SCP-2949 outside containment would require a civilian to have access to one of the few remaining affected televisions, and to purposefully observe static on said television for more than twelve hours. As this combination of events is extremely unlikely to occur, reappearance of SCP-2949 is not considered a major concern. Nevertheless, reports of SCP-2949-1 instances in the wild are to be taken seriously. Instances are to be located and captured as soon as possible. Prompt neutralisation is to be enabled with the use of an appropriately-sized sheet of mirrored foil.
Description
SCP-2949 is a phenomenon affecting approximately 3% of all analogue television sets ever produced. SCP-2949-affected television sets have not been completely contained by the Foundation due to their widespread nature. SCP-2949 has appeared more frequently in populated urban cities than in any other locations, though this is likely a statistical bias due to more frequent reporting of anomalies in places with higher population densities.
SCP-2949 manifests as the appearances of visual aberrations on the screen when an analogue television is tuned to a non-transmitting channel. Testing has found that the device must be tuned to the channel for more than six continuous hours before SCP-2949 begins to be observable, a fact that contributes to the relatively low rate of reported SCP-2949 cases in the public. The aberrations often take forms such as striped or spotted patterns, or, on occasion, the appearance of feline faces or vague movements of silhouettes in the background noise. Longer inspection results in the clarifying of the shapes over time, resolving gradually into vague figures identifiable as animals of the Felidae family, such as tigers, leopards, or common house cats.
Continuous observation of these phenomena for an additional six to eight hours via remote or direct means will eventually produce an instance of SCP-2949-1, which will emerge fully-formed from the television screen. Instances of SCP-2949-1 resemble animals of the Felidae family appearing to be made out of television static. These entities are not intangible; physical contact is said to feel like "steel wool", or, alternatively, "warm and rough". SCP-2949-1 instances appear to be non-hostile. They do not require food, water, or sleep.
Upon manifestation, instances will tend to seek out the closest available reflective surface large enough to accommodate their size. They will then proceed to pass through the surfaces and disappear. Such surfaces through which SCP-2949-1 instances have been seen disappearing into include mirrors, windows, and other television screens.
Sightings of SCP-2949-1 peaked from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, but have significantly waned since the increasing adoption of digital television signals as a global broadcast standard.