Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006

In Dreams Comes the Cat
Phantom Felines

by Selma Sanchez

Gigi and I were the best of friends. I adopted her from the local animal shelter when she was just a kitten. With orange and brown stripes that made her resemble a little tiger and the most adorable green eyes I’d ever seen on a cat, it was a classic case of love at first sight!

Gigi was a sweetheart. She was a gentle and loving cat with the best of manners. But she also had a lot of energy and loved to play. The first toy I bought her was a little catnip-filled mouse on a string. I would make the mouse move by pulling on the string and she would wildly chase after it, catch it, and wrestle around with it. It was her favorite toy to play with, but one day it just disappeared. I didn’t know if Gigi hid it, or if it had gotten caught under a piece of furniture. I searched high and low but was never able to find it. Its disappearance was a mystery.

Gigi and I shared seven wonderful years together until one fateful day when a liver tumor took her from me. The vet had done all that he could to help my little tiger, but it was to no avail.

For weeks after Gigi’s death I thought about her and missed her so much I broke down and cried. During this time of grieving I also made the saddening discovery that people who never had an emotional bond with a pet were incapable of understanding the deep sadness and feeling of loss that a person experiences after losing a pet that was dear to them. In many ways it’s comparable to losing a close friend or even one of your children.

At the factory where I work, a coworker who noticed that I seemed a bit down asked me what was wrong. When I told her that my cat had recently passed away, she acted kind of annoyed and coldly told me to “just get over it and buy yourself another cat.” One friend told me she couldn’t understand my sorrow because, after all, it “wasn’t like a person had died.” Remarks such as these only added anger to my grief, and gave me a sense of isolation. Perhaps I did grieve for Gigi a little longer than the socially accepted time period allows for grieving the death of a pet. But she was a very special part of my life, and I took her death quite hard.

After my emotional healing process began and I could get through the day without tears, Gigi began coming to me in my dreams. She appeared as she looked when she first came into my life—a young and healthy kitten, loving and playful. At first I thought the dreams were just my mind’s way of keeping Gigi’s memory alive. But then something peculiar happened.

One night I dreamed that Gigi, again as a kitten, was playing with me on my bed. I was making scratching sounds with my fingertips under the blanket and she was pouncing on it, just as she had done so many times when she was alive. I then took her in my arms and cuddled and kissed her. I told her I loved her and that she was my little tiger. The dream was vivid and seemed so real that when I awoke, I felt for a few moments that Gigi was still alive. But as soon as I remembered she had died, I felt the tears well up in my eyes. I got up and went into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, and when I looked in the mirror, that’s when I noticed there was a bit of cat hair stuck to my flannel nightgown. It was Gigi’s hair. In an effort to be as rational as possible, I tried to convince myself that this was just a highly unusual coincidence. But then another dream convinced me otherwise.

One Sunday afternoon I was watching television in my living room and started to feel drowsy. I drifted off to sleep on the sofa and dreamed that Gigi was running around the room playing with her favorite catnip mouse. She was having fun with the toy and I was enjoying watching her play. When I woke up, I noticed something across the room on the floor. I got up and went over for a closer look and it was Gigi’s catnip mouse—the one that had been missing for years!

I instantly took this as a sign that her spirit had, in some unexplained way, been paying visits to me while I was in the dream state. I felt no fear that she had returned from the dead. In fact, I took great comfort in knowing that she isn’t really gone; she lives on in the spirit world.

I’ve told this story to my family and some of my friends and most think I’m either making it up, imagining it, or just plain loco. I know what I experienced, and it doesn’t really matter to me if they believe it or not.

Gigi and I were the best of friends. And we still are.