I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight when I encountered the black cat. We didn’t have a cat at the time but I was a cat lover. I think I was born a cat lover and we’d had several cats come and go.
I was in the living room when I saw a black cat going up the stairs. I figured it must have gotten in when someone opened the door and I followed it.
The stairs went up to a landing, turned a corner and then went to the second floor where the bedrooms were. I followed the cat all the way up the stairs and into my bedroom. I immediately closed the door behind me so he couldn’t get back out again.
I was lucky as a child to have a bedroom and adjoining playroom. There was no door in between, just a doorway where double doors had once been. There was no way out of the bedroom or playroom except through the door I had closed.
I went looking for the cat. There weren’t many places he could hide and I searched them all: under the bed, in the closet, behind the dresser, under the dresser, everywhere. I looked high and lo but I could not find a cat. There was no cat in my room.
The only explanation was that I’d seen the ghost of a cat. He looked real to me, as real as any living cat could look. I didn’t even question it when I first saw him. I just assumed a cat had somehow wandered into the house so I went after him to put him back outdoors.
It wasn’t the only time in my life where the spirit of a cat had come to me. Decades later I had another encounter with a cat’s ghost. It convinced me that our pets do have spirits that live on after death and that they can actually send us messages, especially when the bond of love was strong in life.
