The Cat Who Knew Too Much

Stay with me long enough and you’ll end up sleeping with your lights on. I’m a weird man who’s had too much weird shit happen to him. If you read my post about the Angel of Death, you’ll be better prepared for what’s coming, but even as a stand-alone story, it works.

When I was in a group home, around 2010, this feral cat showed up. No collar. Dark brown and black. Big, like a tom, but I thought it was a semi-feral queen. I fed her on the back deck. Tuna, sometimes Fancy Feast. Never 9 Lives, she’d go hunt rabbits instead. She loved me. You shouldn’t do this but I’d lean over the deck railing while having a smoke, and she’d jump up, purring and giving me a lick or two. She’d rub against my face and at times when I felt kinda sad, she was very affectionate.

Now this house, built in 1900, was haunted. Not anything residual mind you; intelligent and able to interact. Twice before the deck was built, I stood, late at night, on the steps, on the wood platform at the top. I heard the doorknob work. A single heavy boot step behind me. I thought it was another of the smokers in the house, nothing more. Then, at the back of my neck, very close, a hoarse “Hey.”

I turned. Both times, nobody was there. By then I knew I was a sensitive. Spirits know sensitives. They try to communicate. But I’m not a medium so I am limited in my interactions and anyway they scare the shit out of me.

Any house that predates the fall of the Ottoman Empire is going to have something lurking about.

There were many ghosts in that house. I saw one very clearly. A light blue and white checked shirt and jeans. Thin build. Long blonde hair. She was standing in a part of the kitchen I was always drawn to. She was beautiful but stuck and troubled. She may have crawled into bed behind me as I lay on my side. I felt a small hand on my shoulder. I didn’t react. I should have. But it was okay with me; I sensed only loneliness.

Across the street and diagonally to the left sat an empty house that was built in 2000. Owners kept moving in only to put up a for sale sign within 18 months. I sensed death and something evil within. I always felt like I was being watched when I looked at it. My daughter died within days of parking in the driveway.

I’d twice heard high heels walking in the street below my window. Both times just before a friend died. The second time I followed the sounds with my eyes and was sure they stopped in the driveway of that foul dwelling. And I was sure I’d heard the Angel of Death come to warn me.

I got pictures in my head of a drowning but couldn’t make out any details. On Google Earth I saw that the death house across the street had a pool. I knew someone had died there. I warned my daughter about that house so why she parked there to visit I’ll never know. And she died by drowning in a swimming pool.

Well. The cat. I never did call it a name. It disappeared right before my daughter died. Came back after Beth died.

This cat was savvy, as cats usually are. I love cats. I want one but can’t afford the extra rent charge. Anyway, when she came back, she would eat, hang around for a head scratch, and then do something different. She would go down the steps of the deck and look back at me, as if she wanted me to follow. I’d never heard of that behaviour in cats. I stepped down into the grass, and she walked beside me. But she always went around the corner to the side of the house closest to the death house. It walked all the way to the street, ten yards from the house of death. It was as if she wanted me to go there and I wasn’t about to go. No fucking way. The cat was good. I wanted to take her in but she was feral enough to not like it.

But she knew something. Something she wanted me to know. Looking back, I had an intuition that I wasn’t going to understand whatever it was and I wouldn’t have liked it anyway.

One of the last days I saw her, she was lying in a bit of sun on the deck. One house member was there with a visitor. We were all sitting down. The cat got up suddenly, catching my eye. You can tell when a cat gets miffed, and she walked towards the steps. But she had only gone a step or two when she suddenly went skidding sideways, across the boards of the deck, a total of about five feet. Something I couldn’t see had kicked her hard, catching her in the side. How she slid was impossible, but we all saw it. We were all stunned, frozen.

The cat ran halfway across the yard. She stopped and looked back. I called to her but she walked away. No idea where she went after that, as a part feral will often go from one house to another when someone feeds them.

I never have figured out what the hell happened. Why the cat came around. Why it seemed to love me and yet guide me toward a house I knew to be cursed. Or what kicked it, chased it away and obviously didn’t want it there.

No one can figure out things like that. All we can do is guess, and in so doing, remain sensitive and open to and as kind as we can be to animals. They often sense things we never can, and they’re protective of us once they accept us.

This story took place over a span of two years. And yet…even condensed like this, I still get chills.