Columbus, Ohio USA
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Feline Ghosts
by Ralph Whitlock
October 2009 Issue

Drawing by Roger Pearce

At least seven or eight letters have fallen on my desk over the past five or six weeks on the intriguing topic of cat ghosts. The first letter is a straightforward one from Popondetta in Papua New Guinea. It starts off with the query, “Have you ever heard of a cat ghost?” and proceeds to answer it.

“Several years my family had a well-loved black cat call Minou. When he died at the age of 10 years we acquired a replacement pet for our two children. Minou, however, was determined to live on in spirit. For months after his death he was seen around the house by all the family. Sometimes he would dash out in front of us, almost causing us to trip. At other times we would be obliged to step over him, only to look back and realise there was no cat lying on the floor. Our new kitten seemed oblivious to her ghostly predecessor!”

Now a letter from North York, Ontario. “Some years ago we acquired two kittens. A friend waylaid two people outside the Humane Society building in Toronto who were taking in two cats and two kittens. She begged for the kittens and brought them to us. About two weeks later, I was in bed and falling asleep, when I distinctly felt a cat walking over me. Thinking one of the kittens was in the room, I got up and turned the light on. Nothing. the next day I mentioned this to a friend with whom I shared the house, and he astonished me by saying exactly the same thing had happened to him – the sensation of a cat walking on the bed.

“We could only assume that the kittens’ mother, whom the Humane Society had had to destroy, had come back to check on us and to make sure her children were well. The experience was never repeated.”

From South Australia: “We had a much loved and extremely active and naughty cat called Sophie. She was an ordinary enough black and white moggie, apart from the fact the she loved football. Whenever she heard one of the children bouncing a football outside she would hurl herself against the door and demand to join in.

“Sadly, when she was only 18 months old she died a lingering death from a blood disease. During her last few days, she slept at our feet on the bed. When the poor little thing finally died she manifested her second unusual characteristic by visiting us and meowing in our bedroom after we were in bed (but not asleep). We both felt her jump on to the bed and begin kneading the bedclothes and then heard her beginning to purr loudly. Naturally, when we got up and turned the light on, she wasn’t there.

“I should point out that my husband had been a gravedigger for a few years, and hence neither of us are given to supernatural imaginings. We were, however, astounded by our ghost and have not told many people for fear of being laughed at. To us, however, the occurrence was very real. We have heard the odd meow and have seen the occasional movement out of the corner of our eyes, but nothing as powerful as the initial experience, and her presence has gradually faded away.”

Manchester Guardian Weekly, August 20, 1995

Drunk as a Squirrel
by Ralph Whitlock
September 2009 Issue

Drawing by Roger Pearce

To add to my collection of stories of the strange behavior on the part of animals, a reader from Sidmouth, Devon, sends the following delightful contribution:

“A few years ago,” he writes, “I grew runner beans against a balcony we had outside our bedroom at Guildford, Surrey. At that time I was making sloe gin, and when I had bottled the gin I had a quantity of sloes, which had been soaking in gin and sugar for months. So I spread the sloes and their kernels around the runner beans as a mulch.

“A few days later, my wife spied a grey squirrel lying prone on his tummy on the top rail of the balcony balustrade. We thought he was dead, but after a while he raised himself up and slowly climbed down the balcony. There he ate some more of the gin-soaked kernels and then dragged himself back to the balustrade and laid out on his tummy again in the sun. As drunk as a lord!

“He had gone by the next day …”

By a coincidence, I received in the same week another letter featuring a squirrel from a reader in Vancouver, Canada. This reader lives on the edge of Stanley Park, where I remember watching the squirrels which abound there when I was in Vancouver. They are black squirrels, though I understand that they are just a colour variation of the familiar grey squirrel, and they are a bit of a menace to neighbouring householders who take a pride in their gardens.

My correspondent writes: “I was walking to the bank yesterday when, as I approached a corner, a squirrel ran ahead of me. A young woman, coming the other way, took a cigarette stub from her mouth and flicked it at the squirrel. (I deplored the fact that this young woman should be smoking and also that she should have teased the little animal, though that is beside the point.) The squirrel, however, did not run off but pounced on the cigarette end and started nibbling it.

“I thought, poor thing; he thinks it’s a peanut, and he’ll spit it out pretty quick. But he didn’t. As I approached he ran ahead of me to the safety of a sidewalk and settled down to his trophy. He peeled off the paper and the filter and then chewed greedily on the grubby little stub of tobacco. He was hooked! This squirrel was a nicotine addict.”

So here we have examples of two animals who have succumbed to what we regard as purely human vices or weaknesses. All that is needed now is a story of an animal who is hooked on drugs!

And now the story of Marco Polo, – who, like his namesake, was a notable explorer – for a wood mouse. It comes to me from a reader who lives near Banbury.

“I first met Marco Polo when he was sitting on the very front corner of a small armchair in the sitting-room, busily washing his face. He paused and looked at me; then got down quite leisurely and scuttled off behind my desk. We decided to trap him, in a cage trap that didn’t kill, because he was a wood mouse, not a house mouse. He was a sweet little animal, with a pale front and huge eyes and ears, and he made very little mess in the kitchen. We knew he would go outside in the spring to breed.

“The trap was baited with sunflower seeds and jam, and, sure enough, there was Marco Polo next morning, fast asleep. He slept all day and in the evening was taken to the far end of the churchyard where he leapt away into the long grass. Before releasing him, however, we cut a tuft of hair from his back, to identify him. Next day we could see he had been in the kitchen again, so the trap was re-set. He was caught again. This time he was taken up a neighbouring hill, and it took him two days to get back. But there he was, in the trap in the morning.

“We decided to take him to a nature reserve on the far side of the village. Between us and where we released him was more than 4 km and the way involved negotiating almost all the houses in the village, crossing a busy main road and swimming across a brook. Besides which, we took him in the car, which involved a detour through another village. This time he took four days to return but then was in the trap again!

“We hadn’t the heart to turn him out again, especially as the weather turned colder, so now he is living here until the spring, when no doubt, he will move out …”

This, in its way, equals some of the remarkable journeys recorded for larger animals. Here was a mouse which could not see more than a few feet, even if the way was clear, and certainly could not navigate by the stars. We can only credit it to a well-developed homing instinct.

Manchester Guardian Weekly, April 10, 1994

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