Spooky Happenings

[RickJ]

Let me give a little background first.  We have four cats (all rescued from shelters) and David, our neighbor, has three cats (rescued from nature, feral) .  One of his cats is a long haired, all black male, named Catsquatch.  We call him Squatch for short.    Squatch being formerly feral is very skittish with people but he does come over on our porch once or twice a week to have a helping of tuna.   Usually he will run away when I take the dish out to him, so I usually just put the dish on the porch and then after I go in the house he comes back to eat. 

Squatch came over a little early last night for dinner, perhaps a little after 8:00 pm (we are not certain).  He waited outside patiently (we bribed him with food once to come in but very quickly wanted to leave; as I said he is very skittish) until we got around to feeding our cats their dinner.  When I took out the dish for Squatch he didn't run away at all; in fact he came to me before I put the plate down.   He let me pet him with out complaint.   I can sometimes pet him while he is eating but he starts growling even though he has a mouth full of tuna.  It sounds funny when he does that.   

He normally eats his dinner and then goes home.  But last night was different.  He was very friendly with me and was soliciting my affection.  My wife and I went out to pet him a number of times and he never ran away like he normally does.   He stayed and stayed until my wife finally went out and brought him in the house.  She held him in her arms well over an hour, until midnight when he jumped down and went to the door to leave.  Again this was highly unusual for him to do this as he was so very skittish of people.   it seemed to us that something was bothering Squatch but we couldn't figure it out.   My wife even look him over for wounds, crap in his eyes, etc but found nothing.

We found out a couple of hours ago that our neighbor David passed away last night around 8:00pm at the hospital.  Looking back at last night it seems like Squatch knew what had happened.  The family was at the hospital so he couldn't have picked up anything from their behavior etc.  Also when the family called us a few hours ago with the news, they said they hadn't seen squatch since yesterday afternoon.

I usually don't believe in ghosts and crap like that but I spend a lot of time with our cats and I am pretty good at knowing when they are trying to tell me something.    I am pretty sure Squatch knew something bad had happened and was looking for some friendly reassurance. 

Please take a moment to say a prayer for our good friend and neighbor David.  He was a very kind and gentle person who will be greatly missed.   

Thanks for listening to this....
Rick

[Nacho]

My condolences about David... 

I am very skeptical all the rest, but there' s no need to look for a paranormal explanation here... Maybe it was the first time Squatch was alone for so many time (24 hours, according to your post?) and actually felt something was going wrong, with no need to use "mental links", "ghosts", or "communication with the dead" theories.

Also, weird things happen everytime. If David was still with use you shouldn' t be posting here about what the cat did.  As David passed away, that event triggered a mental process that turned something "normal" as spooky. That' s another explanation. I will put an example; I think in my grandpa one or two times per week. There is 20% of possibilities that the day my grandpa dies I' ve been thinking of him. If that happens, then it shouldn' t be something paranormal... It' s just an aritmetric issue.

[nihilyst]

Sometimes things do happen that seem rather strange and spooky. I once saw some tv-magazine-show, that showed a cat in a nursing home. It used to stroll around all day. Sometimes it visited certain people and stayed with them. All those were people that were about to die.
That's kind of a different story. It's quite possible that cats can sense some things earlier then human beings, but in your case Squatch was miles away, so I guess it's just coincidental. It's still kind of strange, though.

A few years ago my grandmother's mirror glass fell off the holder (and I wouldn't consider that normal). It is said, that when that happens, the mirror's owner is going to die. And three weeks later, my grandmother got ill and died. Sure, could be a coincidence: the mirror was quite old. But nevertheless it was spooky.

[Andail]

Nice story, and may your neighbour rest in peace.

I personally don't believe in telepathic connections between pets and their owners (though I bet my right hand about 50% of all animal owners do, especially cat owners) but I can imagine that animals are very sensitive to feelings and moods, and some diseases can probably be sensed or smelled in advance.
Your story doesn't reveal:
1. How long had David been away?
2. How long had David been sick?

If David had been feeling bad for a long time, maybe his cat had got increasingly worried and turned to David's - and his own - allies for consolidation. If David had been away at the hospital it would be natural that the cat started looking for a new host. Cats can seem very oblivious and non-chalant to humans, but they always make sure they've got someone charmed enough to feed them.

Either way, it's a touching story, even if you don't believe in the supernatural.

[Darth Mandarb]

Touching story. 

Condolences to your and yours at the loss of your friend.

Cats are very preceptive animals so I have no doubt the cat [on some level] knew something was wrong.  I don't think there was any 'psychic' bond (like Andail said) just more a 'broken routine' that caused a behavioral shift in the cat's normal day-to-day.

Granted that's scientific and nowhere near as entertaining as the thought of the psychic connection.

I don't know ... I'm on the fence about supernatural stuff like that.  I know this ... the morning my grandmother died (in 2006) I awoke at 5am (much earlier than I normally awaken) and I couldn't get back to sleep.  My phone rang at 6 (an hour later) and I knew instantly why I had awoken at 5.  It was my father (it was his mother) and he just said, "she's gone..." and I, without thought, said, "I know" and she had died at 5 ... exactly when I woke up.

Coincidence that I woke up so much earlier than usual at the exact moment she passed?

Perhaps ... but I'm not so sure.

Anyway, sorry for your loss and thanks for sharing that story.  It was quite moving.  I think it would make an interesting kid's book.

[EldKatt]

My condolences about David. And I naturally feel somewhat bad for crapping all over a touching and obviously personal story, but it must be said (again):

Even without bringing in the circumstances involving the cat (broken routine, etc) consider hindsight bias, outcome bias, confirmation bias... The cognitive mechanisms that make us perceive "phenomena" like these are strong and well-established enough that something way more awesome ought to happen before fantastic explanations are desirable. I read about the nursing home death-predicting cat (not the original story, however), and it didn't seem impressive to me. Add all the biases inherent in journalism, and such a story is even less convincing. Precognition and stuff would be awesome, sure...but your own brain already undoubtedly is awesome. It does a lot of things to your perception of reality that you never notice.

I can't say I'm particularly on the fence on this one right now. I am deeply enough in awe of the lump of cells in our heads that we've hardly begun to understand the inner workings of.

[TerranRich]

We don't know what pets can and cannot sense. I'd say something negative about the AGS community constantly disbelieving anything "out of the norm", but I won't.

Until we map out the human brain, let alone domestic animals' brains, nobody can say for certain what either species is capable of. Who knows? I'm open-minded enough to consider the possibility that cats (and other domesticated animals) may have a certain "sixth sense" that we're not aware of. But just because we're not aware of it, and can't prove it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[Nacho]

Yeah, same happens with Dragons, Fairies and Smurfs...

[TerranRich]

Sorry, Nacho, that's a bad example. Those three are known to be fictional entities made up by man. There are no serious claims as to their existence. Finally, it is not possible for them to exist.

Nice try though.

[Nacho]

Evidences of the existence of Dragons, Fairies and Smurfs=0.

Evidence of pet telequinesi=0.

Where is the difference? Why my example is bad?

[jetxl]

Petting a hungry cat is NEVER a spooky happening.

[TerranRich]

Nacho, if you don't understand just how silly your comparison is, then it doesn't even merit argument.

[Nacho]

Nacho, if you don't understand just how silly your comparison is, then it doesn't even merit argument.

Well... You haven' t replied actually... You kicked and stirred, but it' s ok...  I think that shows who is winning the debate.

Second: Accepting the "out of the norm" explanation without no further evidence has been made before... In the times where we believed that the Earth was flat and that the thunders were farts of Gods. Do you want to be there still? I don't. I preffer to support my beliefs in something.

And the "something" I support my beliefs is that we NEVER EVER found anything similar to psychokinesis in any specie in the world. I support my beliefs in that the specie "cat" is very independant and never really needed to make a special evolution to adapt itself to live with humans. I support my beliefs that the time that the specie "cat" has been with us (human specie) for so little (in evolution terms) time that it' s impossible to develope for them something related witha  mental link with their owner, and nothing suggest me in the previous history of the specie that they needed something like that. I support my beliefs in my knowleadge of biology, evolution, logic and common sense. Where do you supoort yours?

[Andail]

We don't really need to insult eachother over this issue; either you believe or you don't, you free to share your opinions but don't start a flame-war, especially not in a rather sensitive thread like this one.

[TerranRich]

All I'm saying is that we cannot assume to know everything about any species' brain until we fully map it. We're a long way from it. There may be things yet to be uncovered that we have not even heard of yet. You're the one talking about living in the dark ages and how far we've come in terms of knowledge and discovery and science. It is possible that there is a scientific explanation for things that we still cannot explain, just that we have not discovered them yet.

We are not at the pinnacle of scientific knowledge. There are still things we have not discovered. That's all I'm saying. We can't pretend that we know everything about everything and that's that.

[Oliwerko]

My condolences to David.

This story reminded me of one weird thing I experienced a few years ago. I was at our cottage along with my family and when we arrived we have been told that our neighbor has died. (My grandpa and my father knew him for a long time) After a day or two the funeral was happening, so we obviously went there. And two days after the funeral when I we was having a dinner, I looked at the clock and realized that they are showing about an hour less than they probably should. I wanted to know the time and assumed that the battery ran out so I went to the kitchen and looked at the other clock. They were showing the same time. To confirm it, I turned on my mobile phone and it was showing the correct time, as well as the radio announcer told it a minute after. I think it was weird that two batteries had ran out at the same time, but I considered it OK and planned to buy a pair next morning. When I woke up at 10am, both clock were running again and still showing about an hour less. That means that both clock stopped at the same time and turned on again after being stopped for an hour. This was a bit spooky. But it turned even spookier when I reminded that there were third small alarm clock in my mother's bag. I pulled them out and saw the same time as on the two stopped clock. The mobile phone clock was fine.

I do not have any explanation for this, but I doubt any technical issues, because the clock were running on the same battery for another few months.

[Nacho]

Can I reply to Terran or will I be accussed of starting a flame war?