Ghost Cat

A year ago I moved into a new home. It is a lovely home, but with a grim past. The previous occupants were a woman and her colony of cats with a few dogs thrown in for good measure. I obtained this information from a neighbor who was all too willing to divulge these gory details. Apparently the woman had so many pets that the person she was renting from was finally obliged to evict her. This being said, what I encountered upon the purchase of my home was not for the faint of heart. It was probably what Cruella De Vil's house looked like after housing the thousand kittens it took to make her most recent coat.

It was awful. 

During renovations I smelled, touched, and saw things no self-respecting homeowner should ever be forced to smell, touch, or see.  Bleach was employed on every surface, cat hair and the like removed from every crevice, walls were wiped and painted, floors refinished, and carpet laid. When the dust had settled and I was finally able to stand back and view my work, I patted myself on the back for a job well done. I had turned the lowly hovel into a nice little home. I named it Milton and life was good.

Until disaster struck. [Cue thunderclap]

I was in the basement doing laundry. My basement is not the coziest of places. There is one main room where resides my washer and dryer and two smaller rooms whose doors look like they were used in that house in Amityville Horror, or perhaps to restrain Cujo. So there I was, peacefully stuffing clothes into the dryer when I heard a sound from outside the door. I froze, shirt still in hand and hairs tingling at the back of my neck. It was a soft sort of sound, like a cat's meow. Now let me take a moment to tell you that I do not care much for cats. Even prior to Milton's sanitation I felt thus. I am allergic to cats, cats smell, they are mean, and they never like me. To me, every cat is that cat in Pet Semetary—a cat that, in my opinion, remains the most horrifying of all movie villains. There have only been two cats ever to meet my approval: my childhood cat Max (God rest his soul) and one Adso Johnson, both of which were/are more like dogs than cats. So when I heard the sound of a cat in my home it scared the bejesus out of me. 

After my brief moment of paralyzing terror, I finished my work and ventured back upstairs, using my peripheral vision to scan my surroundings for malicious felines. Once safe within the confines of my home I carried on as usual, pretending I'd never heard anything at all. I went into the bathroom to wash my face and as I turned off the water, behind the closed door, I heard the sound again. And that's when I knew. The crazy cat-lady had obviously buried her precious babies beneath the dining room floor so as not to be parted from them and now they were haunting me. It took all I had to open that door, knowing that I would see a ghost cat with gleaming yellow eyes sitting on the floor at my feet, tail twitching with the anticipation of attack. But when I opened the door nothing was there. I spent the rest of the night in a state of high agitation. I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge after the ghost of Jacob Marley visits and tells him he can expect three more. 

After a considerable adrenaline rush enabled me to run downstairs to retrieve my laundry, I hurried into my bedroom and slammed the door shut. Apparently I felt that if I was contained in my room Ghost Cat could not reach me. As is usually the case with scary situations, my imagination began to make it even scarier. I began picturing myself getting up in the middle of the night and glancing into the living room where I would see Crazy Cat Lady herself sitting on my sofa surrounded by her army of cats. I would stand frozen in my hallway, transfixed by horror, while they stared back at me, blinking solemnly. The woman would pet a cat on her lap and the others would sit still watching me, tails swishing. And okay, wow, that scared me even more! I got into bed and pulled the covers up over my head like a giant five year-old scared of the monster in its closet. (Now is probably as good a time as any to tell you that I'm twenty-three, not five.)

Since then I've never heard the sound again and have been able to push my fear of Ghost Cat into the back of my mind. But for that whole week that was what I feared. Not burglars, rapists, or vampires like most normal people, but Ghost Cat.