Ghost Cat

Photo courtesy of Adam Pomerinke: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adampomerinke/462305798

It all started one day, late last year when I was sitting on my daughter's bed with her talking one afternoon. She abruptly stopped mid-sentence, stared out into the hallway, and said, "Oh, I thought I saw Zuki." Zuki is the name she gave the cat that is kind of ours. I say "kind of" because the cat doesn't belong to us, rather she has adopted us and comes and goes as she pleases. While Zuki wasn't in the house during that time, my daughter thought she had seen her out in the hallway. She shrugged it off and so did I.

A month or so later, I was sitting at the dining room table, listening to music on my headphones, when out of the corner of my right eye, I saw a cat walk out from the kitchen and into the living room. I turned to look and saw...nothing. I had put Zuki outside earlier and knew she wasn't in the house, so my confusion was strong. Again, I shrugged it off but I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen a dark-colored cat - for perspective, Zuki is mostly white.

A few more times between then and now, I have seen the cat, always out of the corner of my eye. I started mentally referring to it as "Ghost Cat" because this cat is definitely not a living, corporeal thing.

This past week, my daughter has been home for the majority of it sick, so I stayed home with her a few times to keep an eye on her fever. We were sitting on my bed talking when I suddenly thought about Ghost Cat and that time she mentioned she thought she had seen Zuki in the hallway. So, I asked her, "Do you ever see the ghost cat?" She answered, "All the time." 

We started talking about something else, not dwelling on the topic at all, which is weird on both our parts. Typically, I know one of us would've talked about it in more detail. It's almost like we don't want to talk about it. While Ghost Cat isn't scary, not in the least, it's still a bit odd. Odd in the sense that there's something in your house that you can't exactly see, but you know it's there. While it is odd to have a ghost cat, I have an instinctive desire to pet it. 

I have to wonder where Ghost Cat came from. We've lived in this house for a decade and it's only been a handful of months since Ghost Cat came to stay. Is it a neighbor's cat that has passed on? Is it the ghost of a cat that lived here years ago that is now just making its presence known? Or, is it a stray that had no home? I almost think it's the latter. After all, we love cats, especially my daughter, and she loves to make friends with strays. Like Zuki is attached largely to my daughter, so too seems to be Ghost Cat. 

Maybe we'll give it a name.