One moment I was creeping up on a tabby back and the next moment there was empty space in front of me. There was no sudden puff of smoke or flash of light. I reached out to tap her on the back, but as my hand approached her, I realised there was nothing there. I got down on all fours and as quietly as my human frame could manage I crept up behind her. One afternoon I spotted Squeak sitting behind the armchair with her back to me. Squeak's flicking ears always betrayed the fact she could hear my lumbering frame creeping up behind her, but she indulged me. Either of us could start the game and it went on till Squeak flopped on her back for a belly rub. I got on hands and knees and she stalked me. One of Squeak's favourite indoor games was stalking each other. Squeak plucked up the courage to lodge with us when she couldn't get into her own home and was very welcome company. They didn't believe in cat flaps so Squeak was outside all day, and sometimes all night. Minnie's people moved away and new people moved in with their small, shy tabby called Squeak. Minnie's owners visited and they asked if we had a very shy cat, because it always seemed to run behind the sofa or chairs when they spotted it. We'd both seen the back end of a tabby cat. When it kept happening he though it was Minnie because of the striped tail and later he just ignored it altogether. Like me he'd thought it was a trick of the light. "Have you ever noticed a cat by the side of the chair even when Minnie's not in?" Eventually I broached the topic with my then partner. Except, of course, for that one time I saw it dash out of the kitchen and run under the dining table. I'd accepted the idea of a phantom cat in the house that resembled Minnie – or at least Minnie's back end – but was only seen walking away from me and behind the furniture. Sometimes I watched it walk behind the sofa a few feet away. Over the months I got used to seeing a tabby tail-end walk behind the chair I was sitting on. I didn't remember letting Minnie in and I knew the back door was shut …. As I leaned over to do so, I noticed a tabby tail and hindquarters walking behind the chair. The only place to put my coffee mug was the floor beside the chair. One evening as I sat reading in a living room armchair in the living room I got another glimpse of the cat-that-wasn't. I once, just once, saw it from the living room as it ran under the dining table opposite the kitchen door. It was always a tabby cat running across the kitchen floor and vanishing. I saw it from several vantage points: the sink, the cooker and the store cupboard. That trick of the light dashed from kitchen to living room on several more occasions. But Minnie wasn't indoors so it must have been a trick of the light. We borrowed her some nights to kill the mice and visited some days when she wanted a rest from their toddler. There was no way she could get indoors of her own accord – we'd no cat flap and the windows were shut. I was certain I'd seen Minnie run out of the kitchen. "She isn't in," he replied from the living room. "Let Minnie out, will you?" I called to my partner. One evening, while washing dishes, I noticed Minnie dart out of the corner by the sink and dash into the living room towards the dining table. Mice took up residence in the empty house and came through the party wall into a corner of my kitchen. The house remained was for several months while a young couple redecorated it at weekends. Neighbours on one side had a tabby mouser called Minnie. Being cheaply built and rurally located it had a mouse problem. It faced onto the flood plain of the river and during floods, the water came to within 10 feet of the front gate. And some of us simply accept that odd things happen, however you try to explain them.īetween 19 I lived in a new-built mid-terrace house in Braintree. Some rubbish the whole idea, which is a bit like a blind man denying the existence of the colour blue simply because he hasn't seen it himself and no matter how many sighted people tell him the colour blue exists. Some believe in ghosts and some don't it's a personal thing.
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