THE STRANGENESS OF CATS

At this time of year, when people get involved in events celebrating ghosties, ghoulies, and witches with brooms and black cats, I thought I would tell you of a strange occurrence which took place in a parish here in Shetland a few years ago.

It concerned an old lady, whom I will call Maggie, which is not her real name (It goes against the rules of etiquette to call her by her real name). She was a well-liked and respected woman who had never married and, since her retirement from the local knitwear factory, her main interests were one of the local churches, of which she was an office-bearer, and her two cats, which were very well looked after, and probably the most contented moggies in the neighbourhood.

When Maggie died, one of the problems facing her friends and neighbours was what to do about the cats. One of the felines was a very sociable animal and, when a man, who lived at the other side of the parish nearly two miles away, volunteered to adopt it, the beast went willingly and tamely with him to his home, where it settled contentedly into its new situation. The other cat, however, wanted nothing to do with anyone. It took to the hills, and fiercely resisted all attempts at capture, the people eventually leaving it to its own devices for survival.

So things stood until the morning of Maggie's funeral. Then the cat, which had been quietly, and apparently happily, living at its adoptive home, suddenly and inexplicably went frantic. It was eventually let outside, where it disappeared quickly into the distance.

The funeral, which a good number of local people attended, took place, the interment being at the local churchyard, quite near to Maggie's home. It was a typical country parish graveyard, approaching an acre in size and had a boundary of fairly low walls of concrete and stone. As Maggie was laid to rest, the mourners, one of whom was my father, gradually became aware of something strange. On one of the walls sat the cat which had, that morning, bolted from her adoptive home two miles away, and on the adjoining wall sat the cat which had never been captured, and which, soon after the funeral, meekly arrived at a neighbour's house, where it settled as happily and peacefully as the other had previously done at the other side of the parish.