The Cat Saw It
This incident occurred during my junior year of high school in 1972.
During a particularly hot and muggy July evening, my parents, sister and I
were seated in the living room watching TV. The house was unbearably hot
and the windows were open with screens in them. All of this was to no
avail that evening. There was no air moving and I was wearing a light
t-shirt and shorts trying to keep cool. The chair I was sitting in was
next to the doorway and the upstairs hallway. The hallway in the house
divided the living room from the kitchen and was enclosed on both sides
with a large curtain at the bottom of the steps.
I looked to my left toward the stairway just as our cat started up. The
cat was a calico and was very even tempered. Just as the cat climbed the
first step, an icy blast of air rushed down the stairs. The cat hissed
loudly and froze. The hair on its back and tail stood straight out, and in
its frozen position it resembled a pointer. Simultaneously with the cat's
behavior, the cold breeze continued to build to the extent that the
curtains were almost blowing straight out. In 1972, we had no air
conditioning or any other device in the house that could have created the
icy air that we now felt. None of us said anything. I felt goose bumps
form on my arms and back, and the temperature in the living room
perceptibly cooled.
Fifteen to 20 seconds had passed with no diminishment of the icy air or
relief for our poor cat. I got up from the chair and cautiously peered up
the stairway. The light at the top of the steps was on and nothing was
visible. The cat was still frozen in mid-stride, and the breeze was almost
heavy and very cool on the face. Out of the corner of my eye, it appeared
that a very faint, gold-tinted light could be seen shimmering in the
light. Yet when I looked directly at the light, nothing could be seen. I
continued to look up the stairs for the next few seconds, but could not
discern any apparent reason for the arctic air. I sensed something, but
could not see it. Suddenly, as quickly as it had occurred, the breeze
stopped. The cat shook itself as if it had just recovered from an injury.
Her fur relaxed and she proceeded up the stairs and went into the left
bedroom.
The topic of discussion the rest of the evening concerned what had just
happened. My father revealed to me that when he was less than three years
old, two of his older brothers had been playing cowboys and Indians
between the kitchen and the living room of this house. The brothers in
question were Buell and Boyd. Boyd, who was a year senior to Buell, was
playing the Indian. Buell, in the kitchen, was playing as the cowboy. An
old .22 caliber tube rifle was being used by Buell. Boyd was using an old
toy bow. The rifle in question had no firing pin and had been used in this
game for years. Horribly, unknown to anyone, their older brother Joe had
been working on the rifle and had replaced the firing pin. He had loaded
and fired the rifle the previous day. One lone shell had been left in the
tube. My grandmother, Hazel, had been sitting in the living room 41 years
earlier in approximately the same place I had been. Boyd jumped out from
hiding beside his mother. Buell dodged and brought the rifle to bear. He
squeezed the trigger and a loud bang echoed in the house. Boyd took the
round in his heart. He turned to his mother and said, "Mom, I'm shot."
With those words he collapsed into her arms and died.
Could what I witnessed 29 years ago have been the spirit of that small
boy, my uncle, who died in that same house 41 years prior? I never felt
fear as I gazed up those stairs, but am absolutely certain that what
happened was outside of our normal world. And our cat sensed it, too.