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Dr. Marlowe was the only forensic investigator willing to touch a corpse in such odd circumstances. The body was found with thousands of small bite marks on their hands and arms,collapsed facedown on a chalk pentagram in the woods, ground and face coated in blood, surrounded by candles and… cans of tuna? What sort of ritual involved so much fish?

Whatever it was, it's clear something tried biting into them, likely because the body attracted a wild animal. The bite marks weren’t the cause of death. They matched a cat’s, probably one drawn in by the overwhelming smell of fish to this corpse. Could be one of those cultists that poison themselves, maybe?
Marlowe looked around for any koolaid or flavor aid. She saw nothing but tuna cans.
"Tuna? For a ritual?"
She thought after gently flipping the still-slightly-warm body over.
His face and shirt were coved in blood. Whatever killed him, he coughed up a lot of blood before he died.
…No obvious external cause of death here.
No wounds.
Not a single scratch on the man's front side.
Might be poisoning after all,and not sudden onset lead poisoning.
or somehow this guy inhaled a razor blade or five. But that would be ridiculous.
Many poisons could make a person cough blood and die, but this could be any one of them.
But there's not a single indication this man had anything near him except the ritual circle.
No nitric acid,no cyanide pills, no cartoonish bottle marked with a skull and crossbones.
Nothing.
The inside of his mouth looked normal aside from blood coating it.
Indicated the potential poison isn't a corrosive consumed substance or anything else that has an obvious tell.

She took a few steps back to think it over. Maybe she'd see something she hasn't before. She shone her flashlight at the blood splatter. *Sigh* she walked around the body, now lying on it's back.
The blood could have only originated from his lungs....

...
except.....
she looked at him again.
Wait a damn minute.
Her train of thought tried to halt, but instead derailed.
That's one hell of a distorted ribcage.
What kind of bizzare injury bends the whole left side of someone’s chest to one and a half times it's normal size and doesn't even leave a scratch or bruise?
No car crash could do this without snapping everything else and making it dead obvious.
There were no electrical wires, no pills in his pockets,no drugs, nothing. Could be he's just “built messed up” but no, that doesn't lead to a cause of death in a damn ritual circle.

She sat back at a bit of a loss.
“This field is going terrible” she grumbled, wishing she DID have that fourth coffee.
It just didn't add up.
This late in her career.
She's supposed to have seen everything by now. Everything was usually so obvious.
It had to be some kind of weird poison that's not common. That should be it. It had to be.
It was time for the autopsy.
Time to make the nonsense make sense. The body was loaded into the truck,and brought to the morgue.
Of course their X-ray machine was broke. Because isn't that convenient NOW of all days.
Now she wished she'd drank alcohol instead of the fifth coffee she just drank while calling that one tech guy a dictionary of insults.
Pulling on gloves and a detached attitude, she took a breath and made the first incision, expecting the blood work results to come back from the lab after she finished the dissection.
The moment she cracked open the ribcage, an eerie sensation prickled the back of her neck.
Something was wrong here.
But wrong in a strange new way that would likely raise her blood pressure from “garden hose” to “water jet cutter”.
Then, she saw it: beneath the man’s chest cavity, nestled where his heart should have been was a slowly moving blood covered matted fuzzy ball. Words failed her, but “euughhhh” and a grimace didn't.
The fuzzy ball spun around and the oversized left lung burst open from the inside.
She gasped and stepped back.
Oh god, whatever it was is alive inside his corpse.
Maybe it was some kind of horrifying mold or fungi or something.
She didn't know, but backed up 3 meters.
The goopy, disgusting fuzz coated blob broke fully out of the man's lung with a bouncing motion,and whipped around, revealing it's true nature.

Oh god.

Oh fuck

Oh shit.

It was a cat.

A CAT?!

Marlowe froze. The cat stared back with those glassy, judgmental eyes that only cats could muster.
And then—against every law of biology—the mans non destroyed lung seemed to inhale with a wet slopping noise. But she didn't notice.
She didn't really care either after seeing a live cat flop out of a day old cadaver.
A fucking cat??!?!

The cat blinked. Marlowe blinked back.

“What the hell—”

Kath-SPLAT.

Before they could process what they were seeing, the cat *hopped* off the table, shook itself off like it had just woken from a nap, and plopped onto the floor. Marlowe stumbled back as the cat casually padded over to her feet, looked up, and *meowed*.

It was an expectant meow, expecting answers she couldn't provide. The harsh flourescent lights flickered, and the corpse twitched as if missing its little stowaway.
“What… what are you?” Marlowe whispered.
The cat tilted its head, almost insulted, and hopped back onto the table and into the man’s chest cavity. It was a cat of course. What else could it possibly be. The man's non destroyed lung wheezed a few more times, barely distracting her from the cat.
She thought to herself for a moment, and practically tore her hair out with her blood coated still gloved hands,not registering the cold,slimy feeling. This was beyond conventional knowledge and not even worth asking for backup from forensics or any normal field. She needed to call that weird witch lady her friend knew. What else could anyone do at this point.

After 10 minutes of explaining, answering a few odd questions,and a whole bunch of “yes I'm not joking” followed by a “are you fucking kidding me”, she got her answer

The idiot cultist stood in the center of the summoning circle and telefragged a cat into himself.


Three days later, Marlowe quit her job. The final autopsy report read only:
*"Cause of Death: Don't ask. Just don't."*