Sunshine, The Possessed Cat

Introduction

My Uncle Tim tells the story of Sunshine, the Possessed Cat. The first question that may come to mind is, "BUT AREN'T ALL CATS POSSESSED?" Apparently some are more possessed than others, as this story illustrates.

One more editorial note before we begin: My grandmother, who plays a major role in this story, has been known to dispute many of its pertinent facts. But in Texas the stories get better with the telling, and Uncle Tim has been telling this story since the late '80's.

Sunshine, The Possessed Cat (as told by Uncle Tim)

It was 1987 and I was attending Texas Tech University. Out of the blue, Mom called me up and asked me if I could take care of Sunshine, the big black-and-white cat that we had grown up with. Mom had recently migrated to Dallas and she and Sunshine were currently living with my Aunt Lou. After a few weeks of this arrangement, Aunt Lou announced that either Sunshine would be moving out, or both Mom and Sunshine would be moving out.

I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of having a cat in my tiny apartment, but how could I say no to Mom? She quickly made the six-hour car trip to drop Sunshine off.

Shortly after Mom had departed, Sunshine began racing up and down the stretch of my long narrow apartment, over and over again. Whenever any friend would come over, Sunshine would zip between their feet, causing them to lose balance and almost crash through my glass coffee table. It wasn't long before no one would come to visit me.

After a week of this, I called Mom up and said, "What's up with Sunshine? He's not the same cuddly animal that I knew from my childhood."

There was silence on the end of the phone. Then Mom said, "There was this incident..."

My Aunt Lou was into crystals and gurus and just about anything else attached to the New Age Movement. A few weeks prior, Lou had decided to hold a seance at her house in order to contact her dead husband. Two things happened during the seance:

1. All the lights in the house went out.
2. The cat lost its mind.

I'm holding the other end of the phone taking all of this in. After a moment of silence, I said, "You gave me a possessed cat?"

Mom replied, "We don't actually know that it's possessed."

Shortly after this conversation, I woke up in the middle of the night. The door to my apartment was standing wide open, and the cat was gone. After spending the minimal amount of effort possible looking for the thing, I resolved myself to the fact that Sunshine was hopelessly lost. I closed the door and went back to bed, relieved to be rid of the creature. I never saw Sunshine again, but I can only assume that it joined the legions of the damned as they trek their ghoulish way across the haunted regions of the earth.

More from Tim

A big thanks to my Uncle Tim for volunteering to be my first guest author! If you'd like to read more of his work (it's all super funny and highly recommended), you can find his articles at: http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/?s=tim+curfman