Zeit // Geist

I'm not saying my new pad is haunted, but if Maude could talk... she probably would.

Starting with a couple weeks ago — coincidentally, the same day I hung a full-length mirror on the hallway wall — she's been, shall we say... intermittently spastic.

Granted, she's an odd cat anyway. And for a couple days I excused her elevated neuroses for a fascination with the mirror (which never seemed to intrigue her at the old place). But now that it's up at this place, she'll look into it, all wide-eyed, and then run screaming, back arched at first (and then quickly dropping low to the ground) for no apparent reason.

And while a part of me wants to say that this just means "cats" have no place on the list of mammals that appear to have some degree of self-awareness (alongside humans, chimps and elephants), I'm starting to think it's a bit more complicated than that.

From about 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. every night, she dons an entirely new persona. She'll cry and moan, sometimes insisting on walking between my feet every step of the way. If I try to pick her up, she'll purr in delight for a second or two before she sticks out her claws — pupils dilated — and turns her head every which way staring at imaginary images swirling over and around my shoulders. She'll cry until I put her down, at which point she resumes her position between my feet.

When I first told Washington about this, he discounted it as usual Maude shenanigans — and then he happened to stop by around 10 one evening. Here are some resultant quotes:

"You're really creeping me out, Maude."
"It's like she sees something that we can't see."

and my personal favorite:

"You'd think there was a poltergeist here or something."

Prior to this, I had referred to Maude's behavior as "tweaking" and had hypostheised that perhaps she was tripping on Murphy's Oil (or whatever) that she licked off of the floor. I even considered that perhaps a tiny bug had caught her attention, though she's usually much more pleased (rather than terrified) to chase after them.

However you look at it, things took a turn for the worst this past Friday, when Washington was trying to reach for a cat toy under the radiator, but returned with a damaged photo instead.

It was of a wedding (or perhaps a prom), circa 1982. A man and a woman were standing next to each other, hand-in-hand, smiles big on their faces (though you couldn't see all of the man's face -- the photo had been damaged by some spilled liquid, and time).

Washington handed the photo to me, and my arms started to shake. I thought it was just nerves at first, but then my apartment lights went out, and my body turned cold. My spine ached.

Next thing I knew, the photo was on the floor, and I had burn marks on my fingers.*


*Just kidding about that last part. Everything up to, and including, the discovery of the photograph is true. Any "reasonable" explanations about Maude's behavior that do not involve the paranormal are VERY MUCH appreciated.