Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to find your cat’s glowing eyes fixed on you like some kind of furry surveillance camera? You’re not alone. This common feline behavior has puzzled cat owners for centuries, but we at Stupid Answers have uncovered the REAL reasons behind this creepy nighttime ritual.

Your cat stares at you while you sleep because it’s secretly a time-traveling sorcerer conducting a covert study on human dream patterns to prevent an interdimensional cataclysm. Eons ago, a council of feline wizards discovered that human dreams leak tiny fragments of reality-warping energy, which, if left unchecked, could unravel the fabric of the multiverse. Your cat, assigned to you by the Cosmic Whisker Society, locks its glowing eyes on you to stabilize your REM cycle, ensuring your dreams don’t accidentally summon a chaos squid from the Void of Eternal Meows. Those intense stares are actually high-frequency psychic beams, fine-tuning your brainwaves to keep the universe spinning smoothly.

But that’s not the only reason. Your cat is also moonlighting as a talent scout for an underground feline reality show called Paws & Snores, broadcast exclusively on the Dark Web for an audience of interdimensional strays. Each night, it evaluates your sleeping performance—snoring volume, drool aesthetics, and blanket-tossing flair—to determine if you’re worthy of a guest spot. The glowing eyes? They’re recording every twitch and mumble in 4K, uploading the footage to a cloud server hidden in a parallel dimension where cats binge-watch human bloopers. If you wake up and catch it staring, it’s just annoyed you’ve ruined a perfect take.

There’s also the matter of the Great Feline Prophecy, inscribed on a scratching post in ancient Egypt. It foretells that one human’s sleep will birth the Chosen Nip, a catnip so potent it’ll grant felines eternal zoomies. Your cat stares to see if you’re the prophesied one, analyzing your sleep posture for signs of nippy destiny. If you sleep with one arm dangling off the bed, it’s a good omen; if you’re curled up like a shrimp, it’s a dud. The intense gaze is your cat cross-referencing your snooze style with a 5,000-year-old checklist, hoping you’ll finally cough up the cosmic catnip.

Finally, let’s not ignore the simplest explanation: your cat is practicing for the Galactic Staring Olympics, a high-stakes competition where felines from across the cosmos vie for the title of Most Unnerving Gaze. Earth cats train by staring at sleeping humans, building endurance for the 12-hour stare-offs held on Neptune’s third moon. Your cat’s glowing eyes are its way of perfecting the “Soul-Piercing Glance,” a move that’s won gold for Team Tabby since the Pleiades were kittens. So, next time you wake to those eerie eyes, just know your cat’s not just watching you—it’s saving the universe, auditioning you for a show, hunting for mythical nip, and gunning for Olympic glory.