Football cat-astrophe: Black cat delays Monday night Giants-Cowboys game
EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey -- A black cat got the best of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants for a few minutes Monday night.
The cat scampered on the field during a Giants drive in the second quarter and forced referee Clay Martin to delay the game while workers at MetLife Stadium and some New Jersey State Troopers herded the feline toward the end zone away from the players.
WATCH: Go, go, go! Black cat's touchdown Monday night
The cat didn't leave right away. It was directed into the corner of the end zone and then sprinted across the end line to a camera platform.
For a second, the cat jumped on the platform and then sprang out.
It finished its run along the end line before running up the tunnel to the cheers of the big crowd.
The cat wasn't good luck for the Giants, who lost 37-18.
As superstitious as Jerry Jones is, the Cowboys owner and general manager said he was fearful the cat was a bad omen with his team trailing 9-3.But the Cowboys then outscored the Giants 34-9.
"I haven't seen one glare at me that far away before," Jones said. "I know he was looking at me the whole time he was out there. But things did kind of change when that black cat came out."
The stadium said on Twitter after the game the cat had retreated under stands after it was chased off the field, and they were still searching for it.
The cat also caught the notice of some current and former players on social media.
"I was just wondering who was going to catch the thing," Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott said. "I'm not superstitious, but I wasn't getting near it. Thankfully, we got that thing out of the stadium and was able to get back to the game."
Ezekiel Elliott said he wasn't going near the cat, either.
"I'm allergic to cats," said the Cowboys running back, who finished with 139 yards rushing.
The Giants had the ball when the cat appeared.
"I didn't know exactly what was going on at first," Giants quarterback Daniel Jones said. "But, yeah, you don't see that every week."
The black cat is only part of the strange or memorable things that have gone on between the Cowboys and Giants at MetLife.
In Jason Garrett's first game as Cowboys interim coach in 2010, the lights went out when a transformer blew in the third quarter, causing a seven-minute delay. In 2014, Odell Beckham Jr. made the ridiculous, one-handed catch for a 43-yard touchdown while falling backward.
Black cats also aren't completely unfamiliar to New York teams. A black cat stared down the Chicago Cubs at Shea Stadium on Sept. 9, 1969. The Mets would eventually overtake the first-place Cubs and win the World Series to cap a miracle season, and the cat was credited with putting a hex on the visiting team.
The New York team wasn't as fortunate this time.
"Things weren't going good up to that point, so it could only get better from there," Prescott said. "I thought about that. I guess we'll start rolling now that the black cat's bad for the Giants. Who knows? Fun. First time I guess I've seen an animal run on the field."
(ESPN and the Associated Press contributed to this report)
