It was a very cold night in Tallahassee, about 17 degrees Fahrenheit. The apartment heater was working overtime and the inside temperature felt like 60F. It was late at night. I was typing at the computer and Matilda, my cat, was lying on the bed stretching herself from side to side so that I couldn't get in and disturb her comfortable position under the comforter, only head and front legs out of it. The scene was serene and peaceful. No noises around. The TV was off. Nothing out of the ordinary with the regular lights.

I was writing an email to a Russian friend, who was not very fond of cats, until his wife picked up this stray one and brought him home. She decided to have the cat given to a friend who wanted it and he began to object letting go. To make a repeated story short, the cat now his has been living in the family for one year.

All of a sudden, Matilda got out of the comforter, stood up, her ears perked as if she was hearing something. I listened but heard nothing. She was staring into the living room. "What the hell is she looking at?" I said to myself. I began to worry. I went to the living room. The door was closed, nobody could have come in. Nothing at all. I went back to the bedroom. Matilda was still standing on her four on the bed, still watching something in the living room. And then all hell broke loose!

She screamed to the top of her lungs, hissed, growled, jumped down from the bed, ran like crazy to the living room and then back, went through the bedroom and into the bathroom where she opened the lower cabinet door, as she usually does when she wants to hide, and hid there for ten minutes. I almost had a heart attack (or that might I have been a minor heart attack that I had and never knew when until the doctor found out).

When she finally came out of her hideout, she was as if nothing had happened.

What the cats see we don't? I heard other people having similar experiences. Not often, but yet once in a while, Matilda sees things, although she never has gone as crazy as she went that day.

Copyright © Ralph Rewes
February 24, 2007