The Cat We Never Owned Sleeps On The End Of Our Bed Every Winter

We have never owned a cat. My wife is allergic. This is a fact of our marriage, like the mortgage.

Every winter — and only in winter, and I have checked, and it is roughly November to February — there is a cat on the end of our bed.

You feel the weight first. Then, if you sit up, the dip in the duvet stays for a second longer than it should, which is the sort of detail that sounds made up and which I cannot help.

My wife heard the purring first. She did not tell me for a year, because she thought she was ill.

I heard it in our second winter here, at about two in the morning, and I lay there absolutely still, and I said, "Can you hear that?"

And my wife said, in a voice that told me everything about the year she had had: "Yes. Since last February."

We have never seen it. Not once, and we have both tried, and we have both — separately, secretly, and we confessed this to each other on a New Year's Eve — put a hand out toward the weight, slowly, in the dark.

I felt nothing. She says she felt warmth, and she says it in a way that means she is not sure.

The previous owner was an old woman who died in the house. The estate agent told us that, because he had to. He did not tell us about the cat, and when we asked the neighbours, they said, "Oh, yes, Ginger," and they said it in the way you say the name of a shop that has closed.

Ginger died two years before she did.

Here is the thing I want to say, and it is the reason I am posting this in a place where people vote on whether they believe me.

I do not want it to stop.

My wife does not want it to stop. We have discussed it exactly once, in daylight, sober, and we agreed that if a priest turned up tomorrow offering to clear the house, we would give him a cup of tea and send him away.

It gets cold here in November. Something warm comes and sleeps on our feet.

Vote however you like.