The Cat That Guards the Nursery

When we bought the house, the elderly seller told us, almost shyly, that there had always been a cat in it. Not a pet — a presence. She said it kept to the small back bedroom and that we should not mind it. We smiled politely and assumed she was a lonely old woman with an old house and a soft story.

We made that back bedroom the nursery. Our daughter was a terrible sleeper for the first two months, up every hour, until the week we moved her crib into that room. From the first night there she slept straight through, calm, content, and we thanked our luck.

Then my wife noticed the camera. We ran a little motion-triggered monitor over the crib, and it had started clipping short recordings in the middle of the night when nothing should have moved. In the clips, over and over, a small low shape crossed the floor, jumped soundlessly up onto the rail of the crib, and sat there, a rounded silhouette with two points at the top like ears, facing our sleeping daughter. Watching. After a while it would drop down and pad out of frame.

We do not have a cat. We have never had a cat. Our daughter is a toddler now, still the best sleeper of any child our friends have, and when she started talking, one of her first clear words, said happily while pointing at the empty corner of that room, was "kitty."

We stopped being scared a long time ago. Whatever it is, it has never done anything but keep watch over her sleep. Some nights I say thank you to the empty room, and I mean it.