We have two cats. One very old (approx 20), one very young (18 months). We did have another, who died over a year ago in possibly nefarious circumstances we still don't fully understand. But our pair are basically indoor cats, or they are now, anyway. Nevertheless they wear collars with bells so we can hear where they are, and not trip over them.
Late one Saturday night in October last year, I was finishing off tidying the kitchen just after MrsQ had gone up to bed. Both cats had been fed their usual rations, and to my understanding had gone upstairs after guzzling their grub, as they usually always do.
I was just drying my hands after rinsing something in the sink, when I noticed to my left one of the cats stroll past the open door of the dining room. I couldn't tell which one, since they're both the same size and a similar dark tabby colour. The dining room light was switched off, and the kitchen was lit only by the soft undercabinet lights, but I made a mental note to chase the culprit out from the dining room before shutting the door for the night.
Hands dried, I crossed over to the dining room and flicked the light on... no cat. Now, I'd been turned towards the doorway the whole time, and despite the low light I know that nothing had walked past me in the ten seconds or so between seeing the cat and then entering the room - and even if one of them had sneaked past, I certainly would have heard the collar bell jingling. The folding double doors between the dining room and living room were shut tightly. I checked under the table, behind the curtains... but nothing. I hurried upstairs, and there were both cats - the younger one already asleep on the bed and the older one lying down washing herself languidly on a rug (she finds the stairs difficult in her old age, creeping up them one at a time, so there could be no question of her dashing up them ahead of me).
Well, ok. So I was mistaken. Late, tired, etc. Fair enough. And I'm sure I would have forgotten all about it, if it weren't for what followed.
The next night, a Sunday, MrsQ and I had been busy sorting stuff in the attic out until after 9pm, and were now very much enjoying a takeaway from a lovely Thai place from down the town. Chicken pad thai, prawn rice, glass noodle rolls, undemanding telly on - bliss.
Suddenly, we both heard a loud miaow coming from the hallway behind, followed quickly by another. Two cries in total - loud, quite close, slightly muffled and a little bit frantic. A cat that wanted to be heard. MrsQ and I looked at each other, and set our bowls down.
My first thought was that the older cat had contrived to get herself locked in the cupboard under the stairs - the cry sounded a bit like her. It's also the kind of stupid thing she'd do. We'd been hauling things in and out from under the stairs, so it was conceivable she'd doddered in and I'd accidentally shut the door on her. But, on going out to the hall and flicking on the understairs light, the cupboard was quite bare of cats. Perplexed, I went straight upstairs to find the older cat curled up asleep on the rug in the back bedroom, and the younger one also sound asleep on the bed in the front room.
I came down again and advised MrsQ that it couldn't have been either of our two - they were both upstairs, conked out. But we'd both heard the sound, very clearly and at the same time.
We checked all the other rooms in the house, just in case a stray had come in through the cat flap in the back door, but found nothing. Now, the cat flap is one of those four-way locking jobs, and we had it set up so that if one of ours was out in the garden, they could come in - but they couldn't go out of their own volition, so it was effectively a one-way door. If another cat had come in, it couldn't have got out again without breaking the door (yeah, that's happened). But no surplus cats were to be found, nor any damage to the door.
We flicked on the outside lights and checked the gardens front and back, but there were zero felines to be seen in the vicinity. Shrugging, we floated the possibility that maybe another cat from the neighbourhood had for some reason stuck its head through the flap, shouted twice, then gone away again. Maybe. There's a heavy curtain in front of the back door and we hadn't heard the flap rattle, and it definitely sounded like it came from the hall, not the kitchen but... what other explanation could there be? I changed the settings on the flap so it was locked tightly both ways, and we went back to our (now cold) noodles.
A few nights later we were sitting down with a pot of tea in the living room, around 10pm; the younger cat was in the room with us, fast asleep on a cardboard scratching device just behind us on the settee.
Again, the miaowing noise suddenly sounded from out in the hall. Just once. This time, not only did MrsQ and myself both hear it, but the younger cat also shot bolt upright, suddenly wide awake with her eyes huge and ears pricked, staring at the door out into the hall.
I rushed into the hall to find it empty. On going straight upstairs, the older cat was there in her usual spot in the back bedroom, curled up on the rug and in a deep sleep. Downstairs in the kitchen, I confirmed that the catflap was still locked both ways. On a cold wet miserable night, you can be sure all the doors and windows were shut tight, with blinds and curtains firmly closed.
A few hours later, after tidying everything away and switching off the lights, the younger cat wouldn't come upstairs as usual. She remained downstairs, with her back to the front door, just staring down the hall towards the kitchen and letting out occasional yells and squeals. Eventually I came down in my pajamas holding a torch to see what the issue was; sometimes a fly or a spider is enough to get her hunting instincts primed. But there didn't seem to be any of that. She just stayed there, staring fixedly down the hall at apparently nothing, her head bobbing slightly as if she was following something I couldn't see. After a while, I started to get a bit creeped out and returned to bed. In the morning, I found her beside me on the bed, pressed in tight.
I haven't seen or heard anything since, although MrsQ - not really a big believer in the paranormal - has mentioned a couple of times in passing that she'd seen one of the cats somewhere, only to find they were actually somewhere else.
If it were just me seeing and hearing all this, I'd assume I was simply imagining things late at night - but the fact that both of us heard the cry, and clearly the younger cat heard it too, moves this up a notch for me.
Now, one school of thought might take it that somehow, the much-loved cat we lost was making his presence known. While I'd love to think that, the problem there is that the 'displaced' cat we've both seen was brindled tabby, while he was a smooth smokey grey Russian Blue. He also had a totally different cry from the miaow we heard on two separate nights - his voice was quite squeaky and high-pitched, making a very distinctive "weeeeeEEEE" sound (we had to neuter him rather younger than we'd planned, as he was becoming a bit of a sex-pest towards our much older, already neutered female), while 'the cat in the hall' had a much deeper voice, making more of a traditional "miaaaaaow" noise, which doesn't sound much like either of our two. The younger one makes more of a high "eeeeeEEEEeeee" screech, while the older one makes more of a low, grunted "whuurr" sound, although she will very, very occasionally miaow - which is why I initially thought it was her under the stairs.
Cats are weird.