Big Cat (Part One)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

I was walking one of my dogs, a blue merle Great Dane Pit-bull cross bitch called Moonpie and a little black brindle Staffy bitch called Molly that belonged to an elderly neighbour. It was about half three in the afternoon on a lovely Autumn day, it had been warm and sunny for the last fortnight after a wet, miserable excuse for a summer. I had only seen a couple of people walking across the forty odd acre stretch of reclaimed industrial land tucked between Ryecroft cemetery and the railway line, but that wasn't unusual whatever the weather and it was possible to walk all around the nature reserve without seeing another living soul.

I walked down a steep, winding grit path into a thickly wooded depression containing a couple of small lakes fed by a tiny brook that eventually emptied into the river Tame, which itself was barely more than a stream. Towards the marshy bottom of the bowl the path was permanently churned up by youths riding motorbikes around the site, and it was wise to wear heavy walking boots if you were considering coming that way. A group of Canada geese flew overhead honking raucously. The moist breeze carried the voices of a couple of fishermen, they were less than a hundred yards away, I reckoned, but I couldn't see them through the dense undergrowth.

For reasons that I couldn't put my finger on my scalp started to crawl, and seconds later I glimpsed movement about thirty yards ahead through a stand of Goat willow growing in the waterlogged soil on the right hand side of the muddy path. It was a dark coloured animal a little larger than a German shepherd, it was mostly hidden in the shadows but it was moving steadily towards the path. Automatically I thought it was a dog because the biggest wild creatures inhabiting this little urban patch of greenery were foxes, and though I could see a fair way in front of me there was no sign of its owner. I wasn't unduly worried because my dogs were well trained and well behaved, and they never responded aggressively to other dogs. Moonpie and Molly were sniffing at a rotten silver birch trunk just a few yards in front of the approaching creature, which didn't make sense because dogs can smell the presence of their canine compatriots (or any other animal, come to think of it) from much further away than that.

When the creature began to cross the path it entered a patch of dappled sunlight, and there was no doubt about its identity. It was a cat, a sooty marbled tabby with a few splashes of brown and blonde and grey and marmalade. It looked just like a normal long haired domestic cat apart from its unusual colour and, of course, its impossible size – it was as big as a panther. I should explain that I've been an animal buff all my life, I'm pretty good at identifying species and estimating an animal's size, and I can usually guess the weight of a dog within a few pounds. The cat was taller and heavier than my Dane/Pit-bull mix, and she weighed seventy five pounds; this thing, if it was real, was at least ninety pounds, maybe considerably more.

The cat took a couple of steps across the path and stopped dead, looking directly at me with its big yellow green eyes, but though the dogs can't resist chasing regular cats they barely seemed to notice this one. Molly trotted off along the path and swerved to avoid the animal. A few yards beyond she sniffed at the edge of the path before stooping to urinate and carrying on her merry way. Moonpie ran after her, and this is where things started to get really weird. The dog passed straight through the rear end of the cat as if it were a projection that was invisible to her, at which point my scalp crawled even more. The cat, or the image of a cat, wavered and rippled like a reflection on the surface of a still pond when someone throws in a pebble, but after a few seconds it regained its delicate stability.

The creature casually watched the passage of the dogs before turning its attention back to me. It looked at me in a time-honoured feline way, not malevolently, I thought, it just seemed interested and quietly confident like all big animals in the presence of a puny human. I wanted to move closer, I wanted to take a picture or a video with my phone, but I was transfixed and more then a little fearful, and though my fingers were curled tightly around my phone my hand never left my pocket. For some reason I felt that the creature ached to tell me something.....

A magpie landed in the branches some feet above the apparition. The bird cocked its head to one side to watch the creature, obviously it registered more than the dogs did, and the cat looked back impassively. The magpie chattered angrily at the inexplicable something and flapped its wings before flying deeper into the woods, still chattering.

The cat stretched and extended its claws, and I noted that its paws were almost as big as my fists. And then it continued across the path, only it didn't quite make it to the cover of trees on the other side. I heard a soft hiss like someone opening a can of fizzy pop, and the cat slowly faded away. The de-materialisation took several seconds, and when the creature was gone there was a vague mist where it had stood that lingered for a few seconds before dissipating on the breeze. I guess the whole experience lasted not much longer than a minute.

Once I had gathered my senses I went to to check the spot for footprints, but as I half expected, though the clay rich mud was very soft I couldn't see anything apart from shoe prints, tyre tracks, dog prints and a chain of tiny rat tracks – there was nothing unusual, not a sausage. So what had I witnessed, I asked myself. I had no idea whether the big pussy-cat was a hallucination projected by my warped psychology, a figment of my imagination or something more substantial - a transient glance of something from another place, maybe something that was just passing through.

I hung around for a while, hoping to get another look at the creature, though I knew in my heart that it was gone. Slowly I made my way home, and comfortingly the house was a haven of normality. The kids had just arrived home from school, they were arguing over what to watch on the TV as usual, and Laura, my missus, was cooking dinner in a kitchen that stank of cigarette smoke – despite my pleas she refused to smoke outside. “You could at least open the sodding window, love,” I grumbled, but as usual my complaint fell on deaf ears.

I chose not to tell anyone about my experience, especially my wife. I guess ridicule is hard to take from anyone, never mind from your nearest and dearest, and I suppose it's particularly hard to take if you've witnessed something unbelievable that you can't prove you've witnessed. I had no right to expect ridicule, but I wasn't in any mood for taking chances. I'm not the kind to see ghosts and goblins and supernatural beasties, in fact I had never before witnessed anything out of the ordinary and I've always considered myself a rationalist, but I had seen something decidedly unusual and I was intrigued. If the thing was a paranormal entity, I mused, surely it should have possessed red, flaming eyes.

There was no folklore attached to the area of my sighting that I was aware of, it was a railway yard and a series of mining spoil heaps before it became a nature reserve in the nineteen fifties. It was mentioned in the Domesday book as the site of a mill, hence the name of Mill Lane that ran along one side of the tract. Over the years there had been a few ghost sightings along the path at the back of the cemetery, but I suppose that all graveyards, especially old ones, have ghost stories linked to them – it goes with the territory.

I fought with the issue for weeks. I spent hours reading books about supernatural phenomena and trawling the internet looking for answers, but all I got was a big fat zero – I couldn't find any record of any similar sightings anywhere in the world. I walked along the path frequently, both alone and with my family or the dogs, but I never saw anything out of the ordinary there again. Eventually I did what I guess anyone in my position would do: I grudgingly accepted the fact that I had witnessed an inexplicable anomaly (and I also had to accept the probability that I would never be any the wiser as to what I had seen), and I carried on living my life. It was early the following summer that I saw the big cat again, and this time the circumstances were as different as they could possibly be.

*************************

I was shopping with my missus one Saturday afternoon in the town centre, and I was bored out of my brains because Laura was shoe shopping and she liked to take all day. Did you notice that I didn't say 'she liked to take all day like most women'? There's only one Laura Pettifer, and no woman on this Earth holds a candle to her when it comes to shopping, believe me – when I said she likes to take all day I bloody well meant it. I couldn't even threaten to go home and leave her to it because she's the driver in the family, I never bothered learning. I could have gone home on the bus or walked, but we had to get the dog meat from the butchers and I didn't fancy carrying it, so I had to endure the ordeal of shoe shopping to the bitter end.

I needed a break from traipsing in and out of shoe shops and department stores being asked by my better half what I thought of more or less the same old crap, though; I needed an interesting diversion of some sort, however brief. “I'm going into Smiths for a while, love, to browse through the books and magazines,” I said, desperate to escape.

“Is that it?” Laura said, reading my terminally bored expression. “Where's your usual sarcastic punchline?”

“I haven't got one,” I said as innocently as I could, and I honestly wasn't going to say anything sarky until she riled me. “You mosey round the shops for a while, take your sweet time, though there's no need to tell you that. Call me if you need me, and if I finish before you do, which I will even if I read every word in every publication ever written in the history of the world, I'll call you. Or I would if my phone battery wasn't dead, which obviously it would be. Mind you, assuming that the publications are listed in alphabetical order I'll probably die of old age long before I get to the letter 'b', and then you'll have to lug my coffin around with you – you could put it on castors or get a motorised coffin that you can drive - unless the Co-op start doing cremations while-u-wait, of course. And you still won't have bought any bloody shoes.....”

“Twat,” Laura muttered, kicking playfully at my shins, then she lit a cigarette and headed for Clarks at the opposite end of the High Street.

“You've only just put a fucker out!” I yelled after her. “You're smoking far too much just recently, I wish you'd cut down.”

I had been in Smiths for about half an hour looking through the air-gun magazines when the cat appeared (hunting with air-guns was one of my passions when I was young, free and single, and I liked to keep up with new developments). The shop was packed, but the big old pussy-cat didn't seem to mind. He sauntered up to me past a middle aged man idly flicking through a caravanning magazine. The man looked down, aware that something solid had brushed past his legs; he looked back and forth with a puzzled expression on his face, but obviously he couldn't see what I could see – for some reason I was special.

The cat sat down in front of a young woman who was reading a copy of the Fortean Times. She was an Amy Winehouse wannabe with the same beehive and exaggerated eye-shadow and a collection of tacky tattoos on her bare arms. The cat looked at me with his huge yellow green eyes, and the woman looked down to see what I was looking at. 'If only you could see what I can see, my dear,' I thought.

A small boy rushed past holding a toy Spitfire above his head and making engine noises through his pursed lips, and just like the dog during my last encounter he ran straight through the cat, causing the same ripples. A shower of little silvery bubbles broke from the disturbed image, floated around randomly for a few seconds and popped one by one, leaving behind barely discernible misty shadows, and then the image settled down once more.

“What so you want, pussy-cat?” I whispered. “What are you trying to tell me?” The woman reading the Fortean Times looked at me as if I was a potentially dangerous escaped fruitcake. The cat stood up and stepped forwards. He looked up at me and purred, pushing his head into my groin quite forcefully; I could feel its warmth, and tentatively I reached out and stroked the animal's broad skull. “My, you're hot, my paranormal friend,” I said much louder than I should have. “You're as hot as a hot water bottle on a cold winters' day, too hot for any real animal excepting one that's been basking in the sun.”

“Fucking nutter,” the Amy Winehouse wannabe mumbled, shoving her magazine in entirely the wrong section and storming out of the shop.

“If only you could see what I can see, my dear,” I repeated. “Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been? I've been to London to look at the Queen. Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under a chair. What is it, Tiddles?”

“Danger,” a voice said inside my head. “Danger, Laura – she needs to see a doctor before it's too late.”

“What do you mean?” I said as quietly as I could. “Laura's as fit as a fiddle, she's never been ill in her life – not that I know of, anyway.”

“The creeping death has struck her,” the cat said. “It has selected her from countless possible victims. The silent killer is weaving its fiendish path through her body, and more often than not there aren't any worrying symptoms until it's sunk its nefarious roots into her vital organs and wreaked irreparable damage. Laura needs to see a doctor. The monster is in her chest, and it's spreading like wildfire. Take heed, Simon, don't ignore my warning, please.....”

“Shit,” I said, loud enough for the man reading the caravanning magazine to eye me suspiciously. The cat looked into my eyes one last time before wavering and flickering out, and a fine spray of mist fell to the carpet.

“Are you talking to yourself?” the man said.

“No,” I replied. “I was talking to you – I was suggesting that you paint yourself tarmac grey and go for a nice lie down in front of a frigging bus, you nosy bastard.”