Phantom kitty

I feel like I’m losing my mind. Maybe I’m still asleep and it’s a dream. Yesterday morning when I got home from work as soon as I shut my car door in my garage I heard a blood curdling squeal. What WAS that? It happened again and it sounded like a cat that was trying to die, but not without first letting the world know it was angry about it. I stepped out of my garage and looked around. I couldn’t see anything. The meows (if you could call them meows) stopped and I went inside.

It happened again when I got home from work this morning. It sounded so close. Again I stepped outside, looked around. Couldn’t see anything. I wondered if my neighbor had moved out and left a cat in her garage, but that didn’t make sense because she moved more than a month ago and I would have heard something before now. The meows stopped and I went inside to go to sleep.

I woke up a couple hours early and remembered I had laundry I wanted to put in my dryer so my plan was to transfer my wet laundry and go back to sleep. I turned on the light in my garage where my washer and dryer are, opened the door and as soon as I did: Boom. MEOOW! MEOOW! What the heck little kitty? Where ARE you? I have several boxes, both empty and full along the wall of my garage. I thought I saw something dark move further between some of them. I walked to where I thought the sound was louder (it was so hard to tell where it was coming from!) and pulled a top box off, then scooted another. The meowing stopped and a blur of darkness darted past me. It moved too fast for me to even see a shape or distinct color, but it was a smaller blur and faster (could hardly see it!) than I thought a full grown cat should have been. I moved to the other side of my car to see if it was cowering in the opposite corner, but couldn’t see anything. I looked under my car and couldn’t see anything. Where did it GO? No more meows.

I transferred my laundry and thought it was all in my head, went inside and thought, but what if it isn’t? Then I felt bad for poor phantom kitty because it’s hot in my garage and if it’s been there since yesterday he’s probably hungry and dehydrated. I considered opening my garage door to see if something would run out, but then I wanted to know for sure if I really did have a cat in there or if I was actually going insane. I got a small bowl of water and another dish of canned tuna and put them on the floor of the garage.

I’ve checked twice now, and so far I’m a crazy cat lady, only a real crazy cat lady since I might be feeding an imaginary cat.  I guess I’ll try to go back to sleep for a while before work tonight and see if the tuna is gone later, but I’m afraid the excitement has robbed me of the full “days” rest I was hoping for.

Update: the tuna disappeared, but I couldn't find the phantom kitty and it wouldn't run out when I opened the garage door. I'll have to find a way to get it out tomorrow.