Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

A giant beast or a trick of the light? There can be no doubt!

Ionce saw the shadow of a large black cat, but there was no cat. This was particularly worrying at the time, as I was on holiday in the Lake District and reading a book on Lakeland folklore.

This book told of a mythical large, shadowy black cat whose appearance was an omen of death.

A cheery bit of holiday reading, but I found this information particularly annoying as I was climbing a mountain the next day, and encountering an ancient portent of doom really wasn’t a confidence booster.

As you may have guessed, I survived the mountain – but just what had I seen?

As with many supernatural sightings, it seems to have been conjured by the consumption of a large quantity of alcohol. The fact that I’d had far too much of the local Oatmeal Stout and only read about the creature two days previously, I admit may slightly have impaired my judgment.

It could also be argued that, if interviewed by local press about the incident, my witness reliability rating would be slightly below zero. Man sees shadow of giant cat after heavy drinking session – believes it to be mythical beast from book he’s reading.

What keeps this story alive, however, is that I was with two other people, and one of them, equally inebriated, also saw it. The sober one didn’t, but that doesn’t matter (much). What matters is that my fellow staggerer-home hadn’t read the book, but agreed that it was the shadow of a big cat.

People have since offered explanations such as “the cat was the other side of you, elevated and nearer the streetlights, which is why a) you couldn’t see it, and b) it looked huge”.

That’s far too rational for my liking. You can prove anything with sensible thinking. It was amythological beast, and that’s that.

This kind of utter stupidity in the face of the patently “not supernatural” is something of a trait in our family. My sister Sarah once owned a cat that she became slowly terrified of, because she believed it could speak…

Sarah claimed that her Siamese cat pined for his previous owner and called out his name late at night. He’d also ask to be let out; not just by scratching the door, you understand. No, he’d ask in perfect English.

Let’s take both claims and look at them closely.

OK, pining for his owner and calling his name. What was his previous owner’s supposed name? Malcolm. Now what does that sound like? Ah yes… meow. Meow-colm, Meow-colm. Probably just meowing then.

As for the cat’s flawless grasp of English when asking to be let out, what exactly did he say? “Let me out, let me out.” Couldn’t make it clearer than that. Bright cat.

Again though, I’m detecting a flaw. Let me out. Let-meow. And did he actually go out after asking? Not always, no.

So you see, there are usually explanations for the unexplained.

But not in my family.

Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.