from the close
association of cats with witches and magic, phantasms in a feline form
are comparatively rare, and their appearance is seldom, if ever, as
repulsive as that of the occult dog. I have seen phantasm cats several
times, but, though they have been abnormally large and alarming, only
once--and I am anxious to forget that time--were they anything like as
offensive as many of the ghostly dogs that have manifested themselves to
me. In my _Haunted Houses of England and Wales_ I have given an instance
of dual haunting, in which one of the phenomena was a big black cat with
a fiendish expression in its eyes, but otherwise normal; and, _a propos_
of cats, there now comes back to me a story I was once told in the Far
West--the Golden State of California. I was on my way back to England,
after a short but somewhat bitter absence, and I was staying for the
night at a small hotel in San Francisco. The man who related the
anecdote was an Australian, born and bred, on his way home to his
native land after many years' sojourn in Texas. I was sitting on the
sofa in the smoke-room reading, when he threw himself down in a chair
opposite me and we gradually got into conversation. It was late when we
began talking, and the other visitors, one by one, yawned, rose, and
withdrew to their bedrooms, until we found ourselves alone--absolutely
alone. The night was unusually dark and silent.

Leaning over the little tile-covered table at which we sat, the stranger
suddenly said: "Do you see anything by me? Look hard." Much surprised at
his request, for I confess that up to then I had taken him for a very
ordinary kind of person, I looked, and, to my infinite astonishment and
awe, saw, floating in mid-air, about two yards from him, and on a level
with his chair, the shadowy outlines of what looked like an enormous
cat--a cat with very little hair and unpleasant eyes--decidedly
unpleasant eyes. My flesh crawled!

"Well?" said the stranger--who, by-the-by, had called himself
Gallaher,--in very anxious tones, "Well--you don't seem in a hurry, nor
yet particularly pleased--what is it?"

"A cat!" I gasped. "A cat--and a cat in mid-air!"

The stranger swore. "D---- it!" he cried, dashing his fist on the table
with such force that the match-box flew a dozen or so feet up the
room--"Cuss! the infernal thing! I guessed it was near me, I could feel
its icy breath!" He glanced sharply round as he spoke, and hurled his
tobacco pouch at the shap