Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006

The Gerbil That Came to Dinner
Other Ghostly Animals

by Denise Healey

Back in the late sixties when my younger sister and I were still in grammar school, we had two pet gerbils named Bonnie and Clyde and a big striped tabby cat we called Bangles. One day my sister forgot to latch the door on the gerbils’ cage and both of them got out and were scurrying through the house. With our father’s help we managed to round up Clyde. Unfortunately, Bangles got to Bonnie before we did. After being pawed and tossed around in the air a few times, the poor little thing died of fright. With tears in our eyes, we buried her in the backyard, using an empty kitchen matchstick box as a coffin.

A few months down the road, our family had just sat down for supper when all of a sudden my mother let out a blood-curdling shriek and jumped onto the seat of her chair as fast as she could. At that instant a small furry thing about the same size and color as our dearly departed gerbil darted across the dining room floor and into the kitchen where it vanished from sight. Oddly, Bangles the cat did not chase after the rodent, but I did notice the fur on her back start to bristle as she watched it go by. My father scolded my sister for again leaving the cage door open, but she began to cry and insisted that she hadn’t. When we went into the bedroom to check on the cage, we found the door securely latched and Clyde inside on his exercise wheel.

I remember saying that I thought Bonnie’s ghost had returned from the dead and then my father reprimanding me for scaring “the daylights” out of my little sister. He insisted that what we had seen was just an ordinary mouse (although it sure looked a lot like Bonnie) and then went out and bought a bunch of mousetraps, which he baited with cheese and placed all around the house. But that was the last we saw of the little creature. About six months later, after no mouse had been caught, my mother tossed out all the traps and concluded that the cat must have scared the mouse away.

I never again brought up my gerbil ghost theory, but many times since then I’ve wondered to myself if maybe that elusive mouse, or whatever it was that scurried across the dining room floor that day, could actually have been the ghost of our little furry friend paying us all a very brief, but memorable, visit. As crazy as it might sound, I have a funny feeling that the only one who really knew for sure was Bangles.