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So, who doesn’t love stories about evil phantom cats?  The “Buffalo News,” January 25, 1897:

A special to the Cleveland Plain Dealer from Toledo, O., says: Additional details from the bewitched community of Richfield Center were brought to this city today by Henry Niemen, which fully corroborate the strange story told by A.M. Miller yesterday. Whatever the cause, the whole town, or at least the larger German element in the village, is as thoroughly stampeded as a drove of wild cattle. 

Miller, although in what seemed nearly a dying condition himself, came to Toledo last night to take some relatives to nurse his stricken family, which consists of his wife and four sons. They, together with 20 other families, feel that they have been bewitched and unless help can be given them in some manner there will be many human deaths, just as cattle have already wasted away and died.

Before Miller's relatives accompanied him last night they visited a priest, who in all seriousness gave them rules for exorcising and "laying" the evil spirit, just as would have been done 200 years ago. None of the elements is missing from the story, according to the accounts given by Miller and Niemen. The community is haunted by a demon cat and the sick aver, in all honesty, that the visits of the cat precede the demoniacal possession. This cat has been hunted in every manner, for it is believed that its death would result in the death of the witch.

A peculiarity of the disease is the fact that many of the sick cannot remain in their rooms. They have made their beds in the kitchen and living rooms, while one man, named Woolson, moved his entire family to the barn in the hope of escaping this symptom. This was to no avail, as the dreaded cat still followed them, and the Woolson family returned in despair to the house, where they are all extremely ill. Cattle affected give bloody milk, which has long been recognized as an infallible "witch sign." Another sign that is not wanting is the "wreathing" of feathers.

Miller says that his wife has burned over 10 pounds, in the hope of breaking the spell. The feathers wreathed themselves in hard shapes, and one man reported the same phenomenon in the case of a bundle of shavings that he had brought to the house from the barn. It is thought that the water in the locality is bad, which would account for the fact that both people and cattle are affected. The sick, however, do not show typhoid symptoms, but simply waste away, and after once affected the sick show an utter indifference whether they get well or die. The strange part of the case is the fact that this trouble has been going on for over a month without attracting outside attention.

Richfield Center is 22 miles from Toledo and not on any railroad. The inclement weather here has prevented any investigators from undertaking the long ride to the town today.

I was unable to find how--or if--this curious state of affairs was resolved.  That cat might still be prowling the neighborhood, for all I know.

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Ghost horses?  Ghost cats?  I’m sold.  The “Hamilton (Ontario, Canada,) Spectator,” October 28, 2005:

BY JOHN BURMAN--The Headless Horseman rode one of the most famous spectral steeds in legend and literature. And cats are familiar fixtures come Halloween. But how many people know Hamilton has both a ghost cat that gets stuck between windows and ghost horses eager to haul a city artillery regiment’s long-gone guns? 

There’s no Headless Horseman in Hamilton’s John W. Foote VC Armoury, but members of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry insist there are large four-legged spirits in one corner where the old stables and gun sheds used to stand. No one has seen them. But some have heard hooves stamping and harnesses and chains used to haul the gun carriages rattling and jingling. And they’ve noticed the unmistakable smell of horses. 

The best account comes from a lieutenant who bedded down troops in the area some time ago.

RHLI Captain Tim Fletcher says the horses haunt the area known as the old armouries which is that part of the building that replaced the original wooden structure that burned in 1886. There were stables there for horses used to pull the artillery, long since converted to a gun shed for 11 Battery which is part of today’s 11th Field Artillery Regiment. 

There have been no horses in the building on James Street North since long before the Second World War. Some time ago a group of RHLI recruits on a training course were bunked down for the night in the old stables with, as Fletcher says, the traditional military warning to “get some sleep, you’re going to need it.”

As the troopers hit the sack the lieutenant in charge posted a fire picket — someone detailed to stay awake on fire watch — and then put his head down as well. Around 3 am the officer awoke with a start roused by the clink of chains and heavy breathing. One look at the man on watch told him he wasn’t the only one who’d heard it. Snatching a flashlight, he whirled the beam around the room but there was nothing to see. By now other troopers were awake and the room was filled with the sound of horses moving and a faint aroma of sweating horses filled the air. The noises continued for a while and then died down. 

“The catch,” says Fletcher, “is none of the soldiers involved had any idea the area had been a stable until they told others the story.”

The hapless ghost cat haunts a windowsill at the former Hamilton Customs House, now the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre on Stuart Street, a pretty spooky place for human ghosts as well. 

In 1988 a woman named Annette worked for a martial arts academy located in the building at the time. Haunted Hamilton tour guides in the building referred to her as a “ghost magnet.” She reported many strange things in the building such as doors banging cold breezes and a man’s voice telling her to “get out."

But the strangest thing she saw working late one night was the appearance of a black cat apparently caught between a storm window and an inside window frame in the front hallway. The cat looked terrified, with all its fur standing on end. Annette struggled to pry open the window — both had been nailed shut for months — to free the cat. As she pushed and pulled on the window frame, the cat slowly vanished before her eyes.

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If you’ve lived your life unaware that New York’s renowned Waldorf-Astoria hotel once boasted a ghost cat, this is your lucky day.  The “Hackensack Record,” April 21, 1911:

New York, April 21. Employees and other persons in the Waldorf-Astoria believe the great ballroom of the hotel is haunted by the wraith of a cat. 

For two weeks they have searched in vain for the musical or unmusical animal that interrupts every concert or anything like music in that room. Those of the hotel management taking a lively interest in finding the cat, if alive, or laying its ghost, if dead, differ as to whether pussy has a musical ear, just as nature-writers vary in their opinions of a dog howling on hearing music. Some say it is from anguish and others from pleasure, that the cat meows so incessantly. 

It was at a rehearsal of the Singers' Society a new member first joined the orchestra, then sang second to soloists. The stringed instruments were just getting in form, when the conductor dropped his baton and clapped both hands to his ears. The first violin glared at the cello, who scowled at the harp, who frowned at the trombone, who shook his fist at the cornet, who sneered at the flute, who looked pained at the oboe and all looked at the conductor. 

"Gentlemen." the latter man said smoothly, but shaking with anger, “just a leetle false notes. Now, we try again." 

It was worse this time, and the purple conductor thundered: "You all made it.” 

Everybody was angry at the charge but dissolution of the society was prevented by 

“M-m-e-e-i-i-o-o-u-u-w-w." 

Then all present laughed, the conductor wiped away a frown and apologized. For, in truth, in the long-drawn wail of the cat or its unmusical wraith, in rising and then falling discord had touched upon a false note that might have come from each and all instruments In the orchestra, except the bass horn, who had been absolved from the first.

Word was sent to James Brennan, assistant manager, that a cat was concealed in the room and a request was made somebody remove it. Brennan responded with his assistant secretary Zehner, little Tom McCraw, one of the pages, Paul, the head carpenter, Michael Cuff, assistant houseman, and his assistant, Mike Murphy. They looked under the platform, in every nook of the great hall, and even on ledges outside the windows, but no cat was seen.

Satisfied with having corrected the orchestra, the cat waited until the first soloist began. The singer blushed with vexation when, after holding her high notes for the long time she is famous for, the spectre cat held to it on the wrong key as usual, and doubled her time. 

After that nerve-racking solo, the rehearsal was called off. That night and the next day men, by order of George C. Boldt, the proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria, even more thorough search was made, but no cat.

Evening after evening came the interruptions, the cat's voice apparently gaining in strength with practice, and until the hotel employees decided it was the wraith, the doppelganger of a cat belonging to a German musician that long ago had fallen from an upper story and "meowed" all the way down to death.

That is the reason, they think, the interruptions are more frequent and hideous when German music is being played, the cat mourning his owner on earth when the music recalls his kindness.

Yesterday Mike Murphy got a long pole and violently poked a scared pussy from beneath the platform. 

"Here that cat is," he shouted to Brennan.

Brennan was almost in tears as he petted the ruffled cat.

"That is mine," he said. "I put her in there hoping she would coax the other out."

So, the yowling wraith of the musical German's pet still haunts the ballroom.

I couldn’t find any follow-ups, so I am unable to say if the yowls were coming from an unmusical, but entirely corporeal, cat who had somehow found an ultra-secret hiding place, or if it was indeed the spirit of that poor feline who met its death at the hotel.

The Egyptologist and the Angry Cat God

Arthur Weigall at the Temple of Edfu

I love tales of ancient curses.  I love tales of sinister ghost cats even more.  Show me a story that combines the two, and I’m in Blog Nirvana.  The following is an excerpt from Egyptologist Arthur Weigall’s 1923 book, “Tutankhamun and Other Essays.”

The large number of visitors to Egypt and persons interested in Egyptian antiquities who believe in the malevolence of the spirits of the Pharaohs and their dead subjects, is always a matter of astonishment to me, in view of the fact that of all ancient peoples the Egyptians were the most kindly and, to me, the most loveable. Sober and thoughtful men, and matter-of-fact matrons, seem to vie with the lighter-minded members of society in recording the misfortunes which have befallen themselves or their friends as a consequence of their meddling with the property of the dead. On all sides one hears tales of the trials which have come upon those who, owing to their possession of some antiquity or ancient relic, have given offense to the spirits of the old inhabitants of the Nile Valley. These stories are generally open to some natural explanation, and those tales which I can relate at first hand are not necessarily to be connected with black magic. I will therefore leave it to the reader's taste to find an explanation for the incidents which I will here relate.

In the year 1909 Lord Carnarvon, who was then conducting excavations in the necropolis of the nobles of Thebes, discovered a hollow wooden figure of a large black cat, which we recognised, from other examples in the Cairo museum, to be the shell in which a real embalmed cat was confined. The figure looked more like a small tiger as it sat in the sunlight at the edge of the pit in which it had been discovered, glaring at us with its yellow painted eyes and bristling its yellow whiskers. Its body was covered all over with a thick coating of smooth, shining pitch, and we could not at first detect the line along which the shell had been closed after it had received the mortal remains of the sacred animal within; but we knew from experience that the joint passed completely round the figure—from the nose, over the top of the head, down the back, and along the breast-so that, when opened, the two sides would fall apart in equal halves.

The sombre figure was carried down to the Nile and across the river to my house, where, by a mistake on the part of my Egyptian servant, it was deposited in my bedroom. Returning home at dead of night, I found it seated in the middle of the floor directly in my path from the door to the matches; and for some moments I was constrained to sit beside it, rubbing my shins and my head.

I rang the bell, but receiving no answer, I walked to the kitchen, where I found the servants grouped distractedly around the butler, who had been stung by a scorpion and was in the throes of that short but intense agony. Soon he passed into a state of delirium and believed himself to be pursued by a large grey cat, a fancy which did not surprise me since he had so lately assisted in carrying the figure to its ill-chosen resting-place in my bedroom.

At length I retired to bed, but the moonlight which now entered the room through the open French windows fell full upon the black figure of the cat; and for some time I lay awake watching the peculiarly weird creature as it stared past me at the wall. I estimated its age to be considerably more than three thousand years, and I tried to picture to myself the strange people who, in those distant times, had fashioned this curious coffin for a cat which had been to them half pet and half household god. A branch of a tree was swaying in the night breeze outside, and its shadow danced to and fro over the face of the cat, causing the yellow eyes to open and shut, as it were, and the mouth to grin. Once, as I was dropping off to sleep, I could have sworn that it had turned its head to look at me; and I could see the sullen expression of feline anger gathering upon its black visage as it did so. In the distance I could hear the melancholy wails of the unfortunate butler imploring those around him to keep the cat away from him, and it seemed to me that there came a glitter into the eyes of the figure as the low cries echoed down the passage.

At last I fell asleep, and for about an hour all was still. Then, suddenly, a report like that of a pistol rang through the room. I started up, and as I did so a large grey cat sprang either from or on to the bed, leapt across my knees, dug its claws into my hand, and dashed through the window into the garden. At the same moment I saw by the light of the moon that the two sides of the wooden figure had fallen apart and were rocking themselves to a standstill upon the floor, like two great empty shells. Between them sat the mummified figure of a cat, the bandages which swathed it round being ripped open at the neck, as though they had been burst outward.

I sprang out of bed and rapidly examined the divided shell; and it seemed to me that the humidity in the air here on the bank of the Nile had expanded the wood which had rested in the dry desert so long, and had caused the two halves to burst apart with the loud noise which I had heard. Then, going to the window, I scanned the moonlit garden; and there in the middle of the pathway I saw, not the grey cat which had scratched me, but my own pet tabby, standing with arched back and bristling fur, glaring into the bushes, as though she saw ten feline devils therein.

I will leave the reader to decide whether the grey cat was the malevolent spirit which, after causing me to break my shins and my butler to be stung by a scorpion, had burst its way through the bandages and woodwork and had fled into the darkness; or whether the torn embalming cloths represented the natural destructive work of Time, and the grey cat was a night-wanderer which had strayed into my room and had been frightened by the easily-explained bursting apart of the two sides of the ancient Egyptian figure. Coincidence is a factor in life not always sufficiently considered; and the events I have related can be explained in a perfectly natural manner, if one be inclined to do so.

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Offer me a haunted house with a weird cat lurking about, and I say, “Yes, please.”  The “Ottawa Citizen,” April 4, 1936:

Just what it was about the Eardley district that made it the rendezvous for "spooks", witches and other weird elements in the olden days, nobody seems to know, but countless stories are told of mysterious happenings there seventy and eighty years ago.  For instance. Thomas Lusk, eighty-seven year old inmate of the Protestant Home for the Aged, relates this one: 

"Seventy years ago there was an old log building near where the Ferris family lived, not far from Breckenridge, which was said to be haunted. For a time the building was occupied by Joe Herrington. but he was driven nearly insane by the alleged actions of a 'ghost' and finally he moved out. 

“Herrington used to tell that after he retired at night he would hear uncanny sounds downstairs. On one occasion he was awakened by a deafening crash and when he went downstairs he found all his dishes in small pieces on the floor. On another occasion he awakened early in the morning to find his clothing torn to shreds and scattered all over his bedroom. 

"After Herrington moved out, people passing the house at night insisted that they saw lights flashing on and off and heard noises like the rattling of chains and the banging of dish pans. 

"Reports of these happenings spread far and crowds used to congregate there in the daytime. On several occasions what appeared to be a big black cat made its appearance at one of the windows. Shots were fired at the supposed cat, but while some of the bullets found their mark they never fazed on the animal. When people entered the house in an effort to solve the mystery everything was as still as night and no trace could be found of the cat. Finally these weird goings-on ceased entirely but the mystery was never solved."

No real mystery to anyone who's lived with a cat. 

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Phantom cats and a mysterious death. Who can ask for more in an old newspaper story? The "Brooklyn Daily Eagle," March 13, 1886:

Ghost stories from the credulous and nervous gentlemen who draw salaries as guardians of the peace in the precinct covered from the Graham avenue station are becoming frequent. Last week they saw the ghost of an Italian. On Thursday night a brave officer sat watching the remains of Mrs. Maggie Madden, the woman who was found asphyxiated in her bed that morning in the rear of 895 Graham avenue, and whose husband is under arrest on a charge of having caused her death.

The officer's name is Carroll. He induced a man named James Davies to sit with him in the kitchen. The body was encased in an ice box and was in the front room. The officer asserts that while sitting near the stove quietly smoking, the front door was suddenly shut with a bang, and a moment later heavy footsteps were heard on the roof. When the officer went into the front room to investigate the matter, he saw, he says, the apparition of a colored man named Jackson, who had at one time been the husband of Mrs. Madden. The woman left him shortly before his death. On his death bed he said that she would soon follow him to the grave. The policeman lighted another lamp and placed it on the mantel in the room where the body lay. He then resumed his seat and Davies went out for a few moments. While sitting alone, the officer said, he was startled by a heavy knocking in the window and looking in the direction he said he again saw the grinning face of Jackson and heard the exclamation, "I have come back." The officer by this time was frightened and when Davies came back the two men opened all the doors and windows and began singing and stamping their feet. The officer positively asserts that he again saw Jackson's ghost two hours later and that a knocking was kept up until daylight. Tho neighbors share the nervousness of the police and claim to have seen the ghost of Mrs. Madden in the court yard shortly after dark last night.

The "Eagle" carried a follow-up on the following day:

The remains of Mrs. Maggie Madden, of 395 Graham avenue, who was found asphyxiated on Thursday morning, and who is supposed to have been murdered by her husband, were interred in Calvary yesterday.

The undertaker who took charge of the funeral had received the assurance that Mrs. Madden's life had been insured, and that his bill would unquestionably be settled.

It is not easy to describe the excitement into which Officer Carroll's stories of ghostly appearances thrilled the neighborhood. Some little fuel was added to the fire last night when a daughter of Mrs. Diamond, who lives in the floor underneath that formerly occupied by Mrs. Madden, declared that as she entered the hall she was saluted with a shower of stones from tho vacant premises above. She screamed lustily for her mother, and was with difficulty reduced to a frame of mind not bordering on the hysterical.

A further contribution came in the shape of a story from a Chinaman who declared in Celestial English that a white robed apparition had hurried through the back room of his laundry, notwithstanding tho obstruction of carefully bolted shutters.

When the funeral cortege departed for the cemetery, yesterday afternoon, Policeman Sprague locked up tho rooms and took the key to the station house. It was supposed that Officer Carroll monopolized the distinction of having been alarmed by the phantoms, but it now appears that Sprague also had a terrifying experience. This officer's account of what occurred is blood curdling to the last degree.

He was left in charge of the apartments, in one of which laid the remains. He was cheered by the presence of two friends. The fingers of the clock pointed to the traditionally witching hour when a low groan came from the front room in which Mrs. Madden slept with the soundness of death. The watchers were much too frightened to investigate at first, but they finally mustered up the necessary courage. They solemnly declared that the black covering of the ice box had been disturbed and that they distinctly heard loud rappings on the mantel in the front room. Then the fire board began to vibrate in a manner at once mysterious and unaccountable, an alarming development which was followed by the extinguishing of the lamp, the three men rushing out without much regard to dignity. The neighborhood was aroused in very short order and one of Sprague's friends, as soon as he found sufficient composure to tell the tale, declared that he distinctly saw the ebony face of Jackson, who was Mrs. Madden's first husband.

All these startling occurrences were followed by the peculiar noises described in yesterday's Eagle and by the experiences of Officer Carroll, who succeeded Sprague as watchman. Carroll was not only honored with a visit from the departed Jackson, but had the pleasure of receiving a phantom tom cat which invariably disappeared when any overture, hostile or friendly, was made. The four men, including, of course, the guardians of the dead, are profoundly convinced that they have seen inhabitants of the other world, and the whole story needs nothing to complete it except the claim very generally made and conceded that the phantom tom cat represents an animal to which Jackson himself in his lifetime was tenderly attached, and which sufficiently appreciated its owner to depart this life within two weeks after the uneasy Jackson's death.

It was widely believed that Mr. Madden (whose first name was given as both Thomas and Patrick in the newspapers) had murdered his wife--a suspicion strengthened by his his contradictory and implausible testimony at her inquest. However, the coroner's jury could not decide whether his wife's fatal suffocation was accidental or not, and he was freed from police custody.

I do not know what became of this Brooklyn tenement filled with unhappy ghosts.

The Mystery of the Meowing House

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In 1957, a family in Glendora, California discovered that their newly-completed "dream home" had one unwanted surprise feature: a mysterious cat, obviously wailing in great distress. The "San Bernardino County Sun," January 25, 1957:

Vincent Carta's new home is really the cat's meow.

Somewhere in the house there is a cat. Day and night it meows. It has been doing that for 18 days.

The mystery cat is somewhere inside the walls or pipes. Mrs. Eunice Carta said policemen, firemen, veterinarians, friends and strangers have tried to locate the feline.

"Look what they've done to our brand new bathroom." She pointed to big holes in the bathroom wall.

"The meows seemed to center here, she said, "so carpenters sawed into the walls all around the bathtub but couldn't find anything. Then they took some siding off the house, but still no cat."

Mrs. Carta said sound technicians brought in electronic devices but had no luck. "The sound is deceptive," said Mrs. Carta. "You can hear it all over the house. It seems to travel along the pipes. But each day it gets weaker. It can't be long now." She said there are theories that the cat got into a vent somewhere and became trapped in the walls, pipes or possibly a dry well near the underground septic tank in the front yard.

The Elwood "Call-Leader," January 26:

Occupants of a new $20,000 home--labeled as the "cat's meow''--today vowed to move out unless a cat which has been haunting the dwelling for the past 20 days with around-the-clock wails is found "dead or alive."

The cat is believed to be trapped somewhere within the walls of the new home and Friday workmen partially dismantled sections of walls in a futile attempt to find the feline.

"We can't stand it any longer," said Vincent Carta, who along with his wife and two children moved into the house last month. "The meowing is driving us crazy."

But the Cartas weren't the only ones with cat troubles. The home is still in escrow and building contractor H.C. Elliott won't get his money for constructing the dwelling until the cat mystery is cleared up.

The Cartas can't legally tear out a wall but Elliott can. So piece by piece, section by section, walls of the newly furnished home are being ripped out.

Cartas's wife, Eunice, who is expecting a baby in three months, Friday watched workers rip gaping holes in her newly decorated bathroom. Workmen heard meowing but found no cat.

"That cat must have 99 lives," a worker said. "But it's a cinch the animal can't survive much longer without food."

Mrs. Carta said the meows are growing weaker. She said the cat still meows "off and on" all the time and especially "when I call, 'Here kitty kitty.'"

By this point, the Carta's home was a nationwide media sensation. Newspapers all over the country were carrying stories about the poor cat's miserable plight and all the futile efforts to rescue the prisoner. You might say it was the feline Baby Jessica down the well.

On January 27, the "Los Angeles Times" carried a front-page story about the unfolding tragedy:

The cat's meow is weakening. But not the jangled nerves of the Vincent Carta family of 363 S. Glenwood Ave., Glendora.

Yesterday was the 21st day the cat trapped in the Cartas' new $16,000 home has meowed day and night.

Even scientific sleuthing by Los Angeles Police Department detectives failed to turn up any trace of the phantom pussy cat.

Dets. D. A. Wolfer and M. J. Lee used a portable fluoroscope and a miniature amplifier with earphones but were unable to pinpoint faint noises believed to be those of the dying cat.

A Pasadena veterinarian, one of scores who have tried to solve the trapped cat mystery at the Carta home during the last three weeks, said yesterday that after 21 days without food the animal surely couldn't live much longer.

"It's obviously a fat cat or at least it was when it was trapped to have survived this long," he commented.

The generally accepted theory of those most concerned with the perplexing problem--that is the Cartas, policemen, firemen, veterinarians, humane society people, plumbers, carpenters and the contractor, who have been trying to find the animal--is that it got into the structure through roof vents. But where the cat went from there is anybody's guess.

And guesses have been written, wired and phoned to the Carta family around the clock from all parts of the nation.

"Have you checked behind the tub . . . how about the pipes, the attic, under the house, in the rafters?"

Carta, H. C. Elliott, the Pasadena contractor who built the house, and the scores of others searching for the source of the sound have looked everywhere. They have done everything but tear the house down. They have even considered that.

Then there are the other offers. Like the woman who telephoned from Washington, D.C., and offered her dog, "the one that hates cats. He'll find your cat, Mrs. Carta." There have been many offers of tomcats and dogs.

One woman from San Bernardino called yesterday with the information that her family lost their cat at Apple Valley a while back. She thought the cat might have mistaken Glendora for San Bernardino, climbed into the wrong house and...you know the rest.

To the Cartas--Vincent, a retired Navy lieutenant, and his wife Eunice, who is expecting a baby in two months; Vincent Jr., 11. and Sandra, 9--the experience has been trying, to say the least. Have you ever lived 21 days and nights with a crying cat?

When Carta left the Navy eight months ago, he told his wife and children their years of moving from one place to another were at an end. They set out to find a home, their first where they could settle in peace and quiet. After 8000 miles of looking, in Florida, New England, throughout the Midwest and West, the Cartas found their dream home in Glendora.

Last August they paid the down payment on their home. Carta got a job with the Department of Water and Power in Los Angeles. "It's a 25-mile drive each day, but I don't mind," he said. "We live at the foot of the mountains in a nice neighborhood and love our new home, that is, until the cat incident."

The Cartas don't want to leave the house. It's due to come out of escrow in a few days and the damage the cat has caused is considerable. To make sure the cat isn't lodged in a pipe, all pipes were cut and wires were pushed through them from roof to foundation. Siding has been removed. Plaster paralleling pipes and beams has been knocked out. And Mrs. Carta's doctor has said if she doesn't start getting some rest, she may lose her baby.

"But," cried Mrs. Carta, "if that cat isn't found, dead or alive, we are going to move!"

It seems apparent that by today the cat may well die.

Meanwhile, Glendora Police Chief Dan Fay pleaded to both cat lovers and the curious to refrain from calling or visiting the Carta home. Those who persist in calling should relay their offers to help through the Police Department rather than the Cartas, he said.

While workmen continue the job of trying to run down the faint cries--which when louder resounded through the place--the Cartas leave their dream home during the day to find quiet elsewhere.

On the 28th, it was the sad duty of the "New York Daily News" to report that not much had changed.

Vincent Carta had his new house fluoroscoped last night in a desperate "last resort" to find the cat that has been meowing in the walls for three weeks, but it didn't do any good. There was more meowing and purring today.

A police X-ray technician went over every inch of every wall, without picking up the telltale image of a cat's skeleton. He heard the meowing and purring, though.

Even crime experts were baffled by the "case of the meowing house." In addition to a fluoroscope, they tried setting up microphones throughout the house, thinking they might discover the noises were mechanical in origin. But every time technicians said "here kitty, kitty, kitty," a meow came from the walls.

The interloper apparently crawled into the dark recesses of the $20,000 house just 21 days ago, when a telephone man cut a hole in a wall. The cat has been meowing and purring off and on, night and day, ever since. The purrs grew weaker today, indicating the time was growing short for the cat and possibly for the Carta family. Animal authorities said a cat could not live much more than three weeks without food. Living amid incessant purring is bad enough, Carta said, but a dead cat in the walls would make the house unbearable.

Carta, his pregnant wife, Eunice, and their two young children went to church this morning to pray for a way out of their plight. "We can't stand it any more," he said. "The meowing is driving us crazy."

Also on the 28th, the "Oshkosh Northwestern" reported that, like Superman or the U.S. Marines, a construction company was offering to ride in to save the day.

A construction firm offered today to put 21 of its men on the job of trying to find a "ghost cat" whose meowing has haunted the $20,000 home of Vincent Carta for three weeks..

Will Barnaby. head of the Barnaby Construction Co., said he would put his workmen on the job at no cost to the Carta family and that they would "tear down and rebuild the whole house, if necessary" to find the cat.

Barnaby's offer came as Carta said he was being driven "crazy" by the fuss caused over the cat, which is believed trapped in the walls of the house and on the verge of dying from hunger. A futile search has been conducted so far by plumbers, carpenters, police, firemen, technicians, veterinarians. Humane Society workers and others.

"Clovis News Journal," January 28, 1957

However, the Saga of the Trapped Cat was about to come to an end...albeit not in the way anyone was anticipating. On January 29, the "Santa Rosa Press Telegram" reported the dramatic climax to our little cliffhanger:

The "dying cat" in the walls of Vincent Carta's house turned out today to be a squeaky water meter. That was the conclusion of sound engineer Roger Adams.

Equipped with sensitive sound detectors, Adams listened to the walls, traced the "meowing" to the meter, removed the meter and ended the mewing that has plagued the Cartas for 22 days and brought a flood of telegrams, letters, and telephone calls from across the nation with suggestions on how to free the "cat" from its supposed entombment.

"When we got to the meter with Adams' equipment it sounded better than a real cat," chuckled Carta, whose house walls have been ripped into by construction crews seeking the "lost kitty." "They took out the meter, put in the new one and the meowing ceased," he said.

Adams was called into the case yesterday as a last-ditch at tempt to locate the "poor cat" before its nine lives starved to death in the walls of the Carta's brand-new $16,000 home. "We're positive there's no cat in there." said Adams. "It was the meter. But we'll know for certain, with no reservation, in 40 davs. No cat could live that long."

Carta's wife, Eunice, expecting a baby soon, had been frantic at the thought of a cat living or dead within the walls and had threatened to move out. Police, cupping drinking glasses to the walls as "sound detectors," had sworn they believed the cries of the kitten were growing fainter. Firemen and police had to throw up rope liner, to cordon off crowds of curiosity seekers and well-wishers at the house. The telephone buzzed at all hours. Mrs. Carta had told authorities, "I can't stand it much longer."

"It looks like we'll be able to return to living normal lives," Carta grinned.

Don't count on that, Vince. I'm betting your friends and neighbors did not allow you to forget this episode for quite some time.

And, of course, little did you know you would eventually be immortalized in the hallowed pages of Strange Company.

"Mansfield News Journal," February 3, 1957