Cat tales

An even stranger story is that of the Cox's cat. It concerns one of our oldest friends, Brian, a biochemist working in a university research department  -  a person, you might think, not given to imagining things, or jumping to conclusions.

For some years before she died, Brian's elderly aunt would visit regularly. Each time she came she would spend most of her time sitting in one particular chair, and the cat (gratified, as cats usually are, to find a member of the household willing to sit still in one particular place for some considerable time) would spend most of its time sitting on her knee.

The aunt always insisted that when she died, Brian should ensure that she was buried beside her husband  -  otherwise, she said, she would haunt her nephew. Some months later, she died.

Between the day she died and the day of her funeral, the cat behaved strangely. On going into the sitting room, its hackles rose and its fur stood on end.

It avoided the aunt's chair and hid behind the sofa. After the funeral, when the aunt had indeed been buried beside her husband, the cat's behaviour returned to normal.

Far from reacting like Oscar the cat  -  who never lost his composure in the face of death (and indeed seemed to seek death out)  -  most of the animals we have been told about seem to have been very disturbed.

Dogs bark or howl, and cats' fur stands on end. Perhaps they are experiencing the presence of the dying, or have an awareness of death  -  but there is no question of them finding it comforting.

Birds, however, are traditionally associated with death  -  usually as harbingers of doom  -  and several accounts sent to us concerned bird sightings.

In two cases shortly after the death, a small bird would fly into the house and perch, apparently unconcerned, on a piece of furniture before flying out again.

Not all that unusual, admittedly  -  but for the bird to appear unperturbed is certainly strange. It's more usual for a bird that has flown into a house to fly around, beating itself against the windows in a panic to escape.

Everyone involved in each of these cases felt the bird's visit was intimately related to the death. Alison Hole, a nurse, wrote to us describing the moments after the death of one of her patients.

The heaviness in the atmosphere of a room after a death, and the feeling that 'something' lingers on after a death and must be released, has also been mentioned by several other correspondents.

Alison reported: 'Walking across the room was slow as the atmosphere was heavy and the floor was like walking through tar.

Once I opened the window, the atmosphere in the room cleared and I noticed a white bird the other side of the window.

'While it is normal for birds to nest or rest on the hospital window ledges, this was around 4am in the winter. It was dark and too early for dawn  -  and this was not a seagull. I never saw another pale bird in the area.'

The following story describes bird behaviour that is way beyond what one would expect of a normal bird in normal circumstances.

Oliver Robinson's owl made its appearance some time after the death it was associated with, so it falls into the category of after-death communication rather than deathbed coincidence.

But the extraordinary behaviour of the owl, together with the feelings it engendered in Oliver's mother, made the temptation to include it here irresistible.