About 8 years ago. I had just finished showering. I still had a towel wrapped around my hair. I was getting ready to go for Christmas dinner at a friends house, when I heard a cat crying in the hallway. This is a pet free building so, it was pretty strange for me to hear this cat on the second floor. The only way up here is by elevator or by several heavy doors that lead to stairs. At first I just shrugged it off. The cry continued intermittently as I was taking the towel off my hair. I decided to go check. As I wondered the hall, I could still hear the cry but, could not see anything. I said out loud in a normal voice, "Where are you?" and I heard a woman's voice say, "Here in 210. Can you here me? I fell and I can't get up." Long story short, she was rescued.
Fast forward to 2 days ago, I heard a cat crying in the hallway. lol
I instantly thought someone has fallen again and even though I was still in my nightgown, I opened the door to listen. As I peeked out, to my surprise, there was a black cat sitting outside apartment 210. By the size of it I decided that it looked to be about 10 months old. The lady I talked about had died about 5 years ago, in hospital and a new tenant lived there.
I stepped out into the hallway and said, "Hi." It looked right at me and stopped crying. I leaned forward and stretched out my hand. It came running toward me. I'm not sure how to describe this other than to say, it had no paws. It ran perfectly normal, in other words it had no problem running and it also had what looked to be the end of it's tail missing. It was completely black and it had chestnut brown eyes. This puzzled me and I guess it showed on my face because it stopped short about 2 feet away from me. It stared intensely into my eyes for about 3 seconds. I said, "It's okay." but, it took off running in the opposite direction and disappeared around the corner. I just shrugged and went back inside my apartment and shut the door. No matter how hard I tried to forget about it, I couldn't. So, I went back out and looked around the corner, it wasn't there so I went further. It was cowering under a table in the common area. I tried again to get it to come to me but, it didn't move.
Because it looked so scared, I decided not to approach and went back to my apartment and got a bowl of water and put it under the table a few inches away from the cat. I used a almost whisper voice and said a few things to calm it and it did seem to soften. I could tell by the way it's eyes went from round and terrified to relaxed and half opened. I also decided that it was a fully grown cat with a stumpy build ? Then I went back to my place and sent an email to our resident, "knows everything that goes on in the building" person. Every apartment building has one of those people, am I right? lol
I described the cat, told her exactly where it was located, and asked if she knew who it belonged to, then waited for a response. I heard the hallway door slam, which means someone came up or down from the stairs onto my floor. Then about 5 minutes later, she responded saying she went up there, there was no cat, just a small bowl of water sitting on top of the table. She went on to say that the owner must live on my floor and came out and took it back in.
Last night, I went to lay down around 6:30pm and I heard that cat crying again except this time, it was coming from outside my bedroom window. I just remember thinking, wow, that cat really gets around and then fell asleep. This morning I received an email from "knows everything that goes on in the building" person, saying that she heard a cat crying outside but, when she looked there was nothing there.
It's probably nothing but, the weird appearance of the animal having no paws and the fact that I seem to be the only one that can see it has me a little freaked out. lol