Tuesday 10 July 2007

For lovers of cats and mysteries

I don’t really believe in ghosts, I’m too much of a cynical realist, but I’ve never been able to explain what happened in our previous house. When looking for suitable furniture to do up our Victorian kitchen, we saw a dilapidated old pot cupboard standing outside a junk furniture shop. The owner of the shop said they’d just cleared a Sussex farmhouse and this had been ripped out of the kitchen. We snapped it up as a bargain and, when stripped and cleaned of years of grease and grime, it looked gorgeous. It looked like it had always been there, completely filling one wall.

Initially nothing unusual was noticed until on day my neighbour, perched sipping coffee and admiring the renovations, suddenly brushed something away from her legs with a shudder. She has a fear of cats and insisted a large cat had brushed past her legs . I pointed out that my cat was asleep in the garden, but she insisted a cat had been there.

I thought no more about it until a few weeks later. One afternoon I was sitting reading at the kitchen when my cat jumped in the chair behind me. I felt him squeeze in the space between me and the back of the chair. We often had minor battles as to who owned that particular chair and this time I was determined to win. I turned round to pick him up and chuck him off, but there was no cat.

A little nervously I told my husband, expecting my story to be dismissed as a fantasy, but he took me seriously. He said that when he was rebuilding the kitchen, plumbing in the sink unit to be precise, he’d felt a cat brushing round his back. He hadn’t liked to mention it before as it seemed so strange, no cat being there.

We lived for several years with a vague feeling of a benign presence in the house. Our children were teenagers at the time and they never mentioned anything and we never told them about our extra ‘cat’.

Maybe it was our imagination but we sometimes felt it was just out of sight, in the corner of an eye, in another room. It was no way scary, just there.

Only once more did it make itself known to anyone. On her last visit to us , my mother, in her late eighties and with her mind meandering far into the past, suddenly smiled and put her hand down and stroked a cat, saying, ‘Nice puss’ or something like that. She had owned many cats in her lifetime and was an enduring cat lover. Her mind may have been wandering but I am sure on that occasion, even though I couldn’t see it, she stroked a cat.

As I’ve said, I can’t explain it. When we moved the first things the new owners did was rip out the old kitchen We saw the cupboard lying broken and forlorn in a skip in the street. They told our old neighbour that they loved the house but hated that gloomy cupboard in the kitchen. A pity, they don’t know what they missed.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fantastic! You do realise the cat would have had an owner? And not far away. I hope this makes you a little more open minded.

Crystal xx

bodran... said...

What a wonderful story you gave me goosebumps.xx

snailbeachshepherdess said...

Just the thing to read before I switch off and go to bed ......yikes!!!

Cait O'Connor said...

I am a believer as I have seen ghosts and my husband has too and a ghost dog. I know someone who had a ghost cat.
Thanks for sharing. It proves that animals have souls too I like to think.
Nos Da
Caitx
PS I am thinking of a book title to suggest, is here a deadline?

Norma Murray said...

I'm not really sure what it was. It wasn't anything to be afraid of. We quite enjoyed it being there in a quiet sort of way, but there may be a rational explanation. I don't know.

Pipany said...

Great story, LWB..shame about the poor cupboard's end though xx

countrymousie said...

Oh gosh - I like to think it was a good sign - that it was pleased to be with you and came to say goodbye to your mother.

Milkmaid said...

I am a little worried by this story, 3 years ago I had a bad spell and ran over 2 cats in three weeks, not my fault they jumped out in front of me, scary to think of cat ghosts

Pondside said...

This sounds like the very best kind of ghost and one that I'd like to have around too. Too bad it didn't follow you when you moved!