Whenever I see a cat sleeping, it makes me feel at peace. I experience a happiness and a feeling that all is well at that particular moment. So, I thought it would be nice to share some of these moments with all of you. I hope you enjoy.
Let sleeping cats lie…
Feel free to share any pictures you may have of your sleeping beauties. I would love to see them.
I used to call him White Boy, because he started coming around at the same time a black cat started to come around, and I called that one Black Boy. I just distinguished them by their colors. My husband named them Yoda and Bear.
The first time I saw Yoda was in the wintertime, he was on the porch eating the food I put out for the street cats. He was a beautiful, big white cat. I called my son to come see the new cat on the porch, and when we were both looking out the window at him, he looked up at us. His eyes were so wide and he leaned back while looking at us, so we could clearly see that his eyes were a pale green. He didn’t run, and we backed away from the window so he could eat in peace and not be scared away.
As with other street cats, we would see him come and go, at times hanging around, and sometimes disappearing for a while. One of our neighbors feeds street cats, too. Eventually, upon talking about the neighborhood cats, we realized that it seemed like when he mated, he would stay with the mother cat until she gave birth. It was like he guarded her. Then afterwards we would notice him watching over the kittens even if the mother wasn’t around. My neighbor and I noticed it because she had a mother cat at her property and we had one at ours (she’s still here, I will post about her too). It seemed like he alternated a couple times, but always staying with the current family, like he was a good father.
Yoda started looking a little sicker this past summer. He got really bad as winter set in. He had a really bad smell on him, his breath smelled horrible, and he was incontinent. His eyes were all gunky and his face was gray around his mouth. I changed the bedding in his beds once or twice a day so he didn’t have to sleep in his urine soaked blankets. He used to hiss at us and run away. Towards the end, he started to let us pet him. Then he wanted us to pet him a lot. He wanted to be with us and we would sit with him as much as we could. He would only eat the canned food I put out, not the dry food. I would come to find out that his mouth was so bad, that he probably just couldn’t chew it. So, I always watched for him, and he pretty much hung around most of the time in one of our many beds we made for the street cats. At times I would chew up steak or other meats for him to eat, and he was very grateful, as one can imagine.
We did as much as we could for him, short of bringing him in. At the time, we had four indoor cats, one of whom still was not able to be integrated with the others. He lived in the cellar, so it wasn’t an option for us to bring Yoda in to stay. One day, after a few days of subfreezing weather, he came out of his box, his legs were soaked with urine and he had sores on them. It was so cold out, he just shivered, but still wanted to be with me. I got out a blanket and put him on it and stayed there with him, holding him close and petting him, while my husband went to get a carrier. We brought him inside. Our intent was to bring him to the vet, and keep him in our cellar to let him heal up in the warmth while we took care of him, and then put him back outside when he was healthy. It didn’t end up that way.
When we got him to the vet that same day (great vet that we’ve been to for almost 20 years), we had him tested for FIV (which he tested positive for) and feline leukemia. His mouth was all infected, and some of his teeth were broken, and also had severe kidney disease. He had lived a life on the streets and got in many fights. He was in bad shape.
It is hard for me to say this, but we decided to put him to sleep. Yes, I know it’s a euphemism for kill him, but we thought it was best. He was old, so sick, had so many problems. We couldn’t bring him in for good, and didn’t have the means to try to do all that was necessary to help him. We didn’t want to put him back out to suffer more until he died. We really couldn’t see that anyone would adopt him, with him being FIV positive and with so many health problems.
We were with him to the end, with kisses and cuddles and comforting while he went. He reached out to us in the end, and he deserved no less.
Yoda is buried next to our deck, may he rest in peace.
A little clip from our security camera of me and Yoda if you want to see… here
I’ve always pondered the possibility that cats have spirits. In some beliefs it’s unheard of and in others it is taken as an absolute.
At times, in the past, I would think I was seeing a cat out of the corner of my eye, and look to see that one was not there. We have cats, so sometimes I would think it was one of them walking by quickly, only to look around and see them in another room sleeping or something. I always assumed it was my imagination.
Recently there has been a strange occurrence that makes me rethink this. Actually, there has been a few occurrences.
One night while laying in bed, I felt what I thought was my cat laying against the back of my legs. When I reached back to pet him and said something to him, I realized he wasn’t there! He wasn’t anywhere near me. So I paused, and thought it was a bit strange, and then went to sleep. A couple nights later, I felt what I thought was him again walking down my right side to the bottom of the bed, and up my left side about to the level of my hips. I then felt the bed move like he had stepped onto the chair next to the bed, then heard the chair with it’s familiar creak that sounds when he jumps off it up to a box by the window. I then opened my eyes and said something to him while looking towards the window where I thought he was. He wasn’t there! I turned over to see where he was, and he was sleeping in the chair on the other side of the bed.
That’s when I thought it might be a ghost cat. I feel a little silly saying that actually, but I believe a great many things are possible, and this might be one of them.
A couple days later, my husband said to me, “I think your ghost cat visited me.” He proceeded to tell me he felt the bed covers pull a little tightly around one of his legs, as if a cat was standing over him with it’s feet on each side of his leg. We’ve had cats for many, many years, so we know what that sort of thing feels like.
Then, a couple days ago, he saw a cat walk past him and, wanting to pay it some attention, went towards where it walked to pick it up or pet it. I was in the room with him, but not facing where he was. He was so confused, he asked me where the cat went. I didn’t know what he was talking about. There weren’t even any cats near where we were. My husband is not the type of person who is given to flights of fancy or automatically jumping to a paranormal conclusion, so that makes this more significant to me.
I decided to look up ghost cats on the internet, just to see if anyone had any information or personal stories on the topic. I learned that a LOT of people seem to have these experiences. Some had cats who had passed on and they thought that’s what it was. Others, didn’t have any animals, so they thought maybe a cat passed in the house they lived in at some time in the past.
If you are interested, I read some of these accounts at Above Top Secret, Seeks Ghosts, and Reddit, to name a few. And here are a couple of videos to check out: Ghost Cat (youtube) Ghost Cat 2. I haven’t read them, but here are a couple of books you might want to check out: Ghost Cats: Human Encounters With Feline Spirits, and Ghost Cats of the South.
I’m not sure if it is just the mind, an energy the cat left behind, or an actual interactive cat spirit. It may be possible that if a cat really enjoyed their life, that they may stay on there after their death. Maybe, they would want to be with someone who really cared for them, when no one else did. We have fed and sheltered many strays and feral cats for many years. We’ve buried so many on our property, because we believe they deserve that respect. We’ve had more than a few come here to die, as if they knew we loved them and wanted to care for them properly, even after death.
We had one recently. We called him Yoda. We actually had to have him put to sleep. He was too far gone for us to be able to help him. These latest occurrences didn’t happen until about a week or so after he died.
It could be him, or any of the others (Thomas, Chuckie, PseudoChuckie, Brownie, Static, or any of the countless nameless ones) who have passed on our property. It could be Smudge, who passed a few years ago, (her story is here: Princess Smudge). I don’t know, but I find it interesting that so many others have similar experiences.
It was August 1999 and my family and I were on a trek to the ice cream shop a few blocks away, when we saw our neighbor in her yard playing with a kitten. We all thought it was cute, of course, and she asked us if we wanted a kitten. I promptly, but politely, declined. My husband said, “I’ll tell you what. If you have a calico, we’ll take it.” She told us to wait a minute and that she had another one that she knew we couldn’t say no to, and she went in the house. I think we were just trying to be polite by waiting to see what she had, but as soon as we saw the kitten, we were done for. That lady knew what she was doing for sure by bringing that one out for us to see. Of course the kids loved her. I have always been a cat person, so of course I loved her too, but I didn’t want the extra responsibility and cost of having a pet. So we all pet her and I think I said something like we’d think about it. As we continued to walk, slowly, while discussing it, it was clear we all knew we were going to take her home. So we turned around before even making it a couple of houses away, to go claim our kitty!
One of us wanted to name her Princess, one wanted to call her Smudge (due to a spot of orange on her head like a smudge of paint), and one wanted to call her Raspberry (the box we made a bed out of had the word raspberry on the side in big pink letters). We decided on Princess Smudge.
She was interesting. She was my kids’ first pet, and I hadn’t had any pets for many years. My husband had been a “dog person” since he was a kid. His family always owned dogs, but he quickly became a cat person. He is indeed a “crazy cat man” now!
Smudge would hide behind the toilet for the first couple days we had her, then she would explore a little more in days to come. I lost her once when I kept hearing her little meow, but could not see her anywhere. It turned out that she had gotten on top of one of the beams in the cellar and didn’t know how to get down!
Once she got older, she turned into what I would call a grumpy old lady, but before her time, as she wasn’t actually old. Through the years, the kids loved her, and she would often be the subject of drawings, paintings, little sculptures with salt clay and play-doh. When we got a guinea pig, named Daisy, Smudge would hang out on the table next to the cage, but more often would just lay on top of it watching the pig. She didn’t play an awful lot, and wouldn’t lay on our laps much, but she always wanted to be near us. She’d lay on the floor next to us, on the couch, or even on the table when my kids would be doing school work or whatever at the table.
When Sparks came along, Smudge wasn’t happy. She was princess/queen of the house for 12 years, then we brought Sparks in. He showed up after a flood, starved for attention, so we assumed he was a displaced cat due to the flood, and we decided to take him in. He was super happy to be welcomed in, but Smudge wasn’t happy. She showed him his place, and he complied. She didn’t have claws, but she would whack him hard with her paw. Smudge was able to hit so hard, it shocked my sister in law when she was at the receiving end of the “thunder paw,” as we liked to call it. 😀 Sparks just wanted to be with her, but it took her a long time to welcome him. They got along fine as long as he didn’t go near her too much. Sparks never laid on our laps when she was here, but started to soon after she was gone. Also, no other cat laid on the back of the chair where she always laid. Once, after Smudge died, Sammi laid on it, didn’t really settle in, then jumped off shortly after. No one else since then has gone up there, including her.
Smudge was a little less irritated when we brought Trixie in, perhaps because she got used to Sparks and she wasn’t an only cat anymore.
And then there was Sammi…
So she ended up not being a solo cat for the rest of her life. We never planned on the other cats coming in, our feelings about them and helping them evolved to what it is now.
Smudge ended up having kidney disease that we treated with medication for a short while, when we discovered she had a tumor in her mouth and she couldn’t eat or drink anymore. She was starving. 😦 She was 17 years old in a weakened condition and the doctor said she might not even survive any surgery. We decided to put her to sleep. We didn’t want her to suffer anymore. We stayed right there with her to the end. She looked like she knew she was loved.
I dream of a lot of things, but there is one thing I dream of often. Can you guess? Cats, of course!
I had another one last night. This time it was about two of my cats getting outside. They are strictly indoor cats, so the thought of them getting outside is not a comfortable one, to say the least. This dream theme presents itself often, but in many different scenarios.
This time it was a man who stole my cat, Sparks. I saw him at a gas station across the street from my house (the house in my dream was nothing like my real house), holding the cat with one arm and holding a rifle with the other one. Feel free to psychoanalyze… 😀
Even though Sparks looked like he couldn’t care less about his situation, I was horrified! I started to yell at the guy to bring him back, and in true dream form, the guy was seemingly teleported to my yard dropping the cat off and walking away. Great, right? Well yeah, until I saw that my other cat, Jeff, got outside in the meantime.
So, I tried to grab them both at the same time to put them in the house. Jeff wriggled out of my grasp and ran under the porch. I got Sparks in the house, and then I woke up feeling freaked out that I lost Jeff!
The other type of cat dreams I have pretty frequently involve outside cats. I feed the street cats, so I see a lot of them every day. Some I see less frequently, but they make their rounds enough that I know who they are. We even name them.
One of the first times I remember dreaming of a street cat was when I dreamed of a feral cat named Chucky. He was so cute (aren’t they all though?), with his big head and chunky cheeks. I was so worried about him all the time, it’s no wonder he made his way into my head. In my dream he tried to get in the house and I told him he couldn’t come in because he had bugs on him, and I couldn’t let my indoor cats be exposed to them. He looked so sad, and I felt so bad that I couldn’t help him more. Incidentally, we tried to bring Chucky into our home, but it didn’t work out. I’ll share that story in another post at some point.
My dreams of cats have evolved. I now dream of random street cats being all wounded and needing medical care. Sometimes they are so bad looking, I’m amazed they are alive. Sometimes they try to get in the house and I have to shoo them out. Again, feel free to psychoanalyze…
The reason I’m sharing this is because, as many of you may know, cats have a way of really affecting us humans. I care deeply about all animals, but I guess I became a cat person as a child, since as far back as I can remember, cats have been in our homes.
I’m interested in finding out if I’m not alone in my dream life experiences with cats. If you’d like to, please share in the comments.
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoy what you find here. My purpose for creating this blog is for it to be a dedication to all the cats I’ve known and loved, whether feral, strays, or my own indoor cats. There’s no knowing where this may lead…
One might think that not a lot of people would find it interesting, but being a cat person, I know there are soooo many more out there that may enjoy my stories about them. I will also be sharing my relatively limited knowledge about them, and my vast experience with them. I’ll also be throwing in some thought provoking ramblings about differing opinions concerning our furry friends.
Cool for Cats 