I've always been proud of what I consider to be my practical frame of mind. I don’t believe in ghosts or supernatural occurrences, the first are figments of the imagination and the second always have a logical explanation, scientific or otherwise. It’s funny how many people think their dreams have a special meaning when a touch of the screaming hab-dabs in the night followed by a mouth tasting like the bottom of a parrots cage when waking, is merely the result of too many keg bitters or shag fags the night before.
Spooks, banshees, werewolves and vampires live in books not in life, the only blood suckers I know are mosquitoes, leeches and money-lenders calling themselves finance companies.
If anything went bump in the night where I used to live in Paddington, it was the rats under the floorboards playing tag with the spuds they pinched from the larder, and the rats were there because the Irish family next door kept chickens which they seldom cleaned out. When I asked Pat why he didn't clean his chickens he said it was natural for them to be like that, but he would make a trap to catch the rats. So he did, and he caught a rat in it too. Trouble was, the trap he made was the size of a small tea chest, and when he dropped it in a tin bath of water the rat just swam on top of the water inside the cage. So Pat tried poking it under with a stick but couldn't keep it down, so he decided to electrocute it. He fixed a length of twin flex to a bayonet cap plug, put it in a light plug and plunged the bared ends into the water. The next second there was a blinding flash and the rat was dead and Pat was thrown against the backyard wall with enough force to break his back. He didn't, luckily, but I thought it would have been easier to clean out the chickens or leave the rats to our cat who, in between siring most of the kittens around and fighting any available tom, was a dedicated rat killer, and seemingly indestructible.
Until one night he forgot his kerb drill and went to the old tom's Valhalla via the wheels of a passing motorist.
Two little boys knocked at the door and asked did I have a black cat with a white spot on his left ear, cos if I did, he was laying in the road, he'd been "runned over".
It was him alright, white spot and all, so I took him home, dug a hole in the garden, or should I say, backyard, and buried him with due respect for a departed warrior.
It was about an hour later when my wife and I were in the throes of a game of chess and I was in my usual position wondering how the hell can I be two moves from defeat when I’ve had her completely tied up since the start, when the silence was shattered by the deep yowling of a randy tom.
Our tom. No mistake about it. We'd heard it so often.
We looked at each other and she said fearfully "It's him". My wife appeared to have gone a delicate shade of green and I felt as if my tongue had been dipped in the budgie grit box.
Reason asserted itself, whoever heard of a cat ghost? No such thing as ghosts. Just an interloper who sensed the king was dead and was taking over his domain. So I opened the door to shoo away the pretender and in walked our mog, as disreputable as ever, between my wife and I and straight to his feed tin. Ate his grub, gave himself his usual swift lick round the face and backside, and sallied forth past my wife and I into the night.
We hadn't moved or said a word.
Hadn't I just buried him two feet deep in the yard? We went to the grave to see and it was undisturbed. Then I tumbled. As I said, there's a logical explanation for everything and what I'd done was to bury another cat exactly like ours. A coincidence no less, which more than likely accounts for half the so called ghosts.
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