Tuesday, September 26, 2006

The Phantom Cat

Hi y’all. I’ve been meaning to write a sort of review of my time at the Roger Waters concert, but honestly, time eludes me. Since sobering up, I really have not had any free moments to write about that glorious eve!
I shall. I will. I promise.
But firstly, I must speak briefly of something that has been happening to me every night when I lay in bed and try to fall asleep.
Have I got your attention now?
OK…. this is a mystery, and I am wondering if any of you cat owners out there can reassure me that I am not losing my marbles.
Personally, I am not excluding [at this point] the possibility that I am simply going mental.
Here is what happens.
When I finally get in bed at night and get all comfy, usually, minutes later, my cat Jack [shown here] jumps up on either of the endtables and gingerly makes his way over to me. You may be able to picture what I mean…. he walks so carefully it is as if he does not want to awaken me, although I am not yet asleep. Then he usually crouches down and sleeps rather near to my face.
Lately, however, he has not been doing this. And I am not sure why. Yet, in the morning, there he is, down at my feet in the nether regions of the bed.
Thing is, for the past few weeks, as I lay there each night I swear that I can feel him walking across the bed and the pillows, and when I turn to look, he is not there.
It is like….. like a ghost cat is walking towards me. The phantom cat.
[Don’t laugh].
It is really bugging me.
And never was it worse than last night.
I was laying there as I do, on my side. Then the phantom cat arrived. Behind me, I felt him gently walk onto the bed, from the endtable. This time I was not going to be duped. So I waited.
Yep, I lay there and said to myself, “OK, is that the sense of the mattress actually indenting under the weight of his paws? Is that the blanket actually feeling like it is moving against the back of my neck, because Jack is kneading it like he does? Am I imagining this? NO. I am not imagining a damn thing. It is real. When I turn my head, he will be there. This time for sure he….”

He wasn’t there!
And I turned around like really fast.
It’s not as though Jack jumped off the bed, so please don’t tell me he was there and he jumped off the bed before I could see him do it because that is not a valid explanation. For one thing, there is no reason for Jack to be that jumpy. We’ve been calmly sleeping together for years! And don’t try and tell me it is the after-effects of breathing the fumes at the Waters concert [which admittedly, were quite hallucinatory!] The phantom cat has been visiting me long before I got peripherally stoned at that concert.

Please, can anyone let me know if you have ever experienced the phantom cat?
If so, did the remedy involve an exorcist?
It’s like I swear to God there is a ghost cat that gets in my bed every night.
And for all I know, it is the reason that the real live cat [Jack] is keeping his distance.

*********

4 comments:

Cipriano said...

Ranty: This is as good an explanation as any.
Yes, I will be the Cat-Pope!
[I wonder if when I assume my title, I will still have to clean his cat POOP though. Perhaps I will appoint Royal Poop Collectors. Yes..... see, I am already delegating work!]

Anonymous said...

All right, Cipriano. All right.
Calm down, everyone.

Put Jack on.

We all know he writes a sensible column...even when hitting the bottle.
I think we can count on him for the facts here.

Not that you aren't completely credible yourself.

But, really. Wouldn't this make sense?

Jack, what do you say, fella? Give us the straight dope.

Isabella K said...

I have experienced the phantom cat phenomenon. I believe it is the ghost of Schrodinger's hypothetically potentially dead cat (yes, even tho my cat's my cat, your cat is your cat, and Schrodinger's cat is his, "cat" tends to operate either as a Borg collective or Supreme and Only Meaningful Entity in the Universe, kind of like how light is both a wave and a particle). As we know, cats are more open to/in tune with parallel universes. Occasionally universes cross their wires, and habitual behaviours cross universes -- the phantom is merely a trace from one such universe.

Stefanie said...

I too have experienced the phantom cat. I've even heard it meow. I think Isabella is right, it's a totally multi-dimensional quantum thing that probably has much to do with string theory. You should send an email to Briane Greene and see if he sends you back as nice of an email as Emma did :)