G is for Ghosts

  "But we were talking about cats," Thora continued. "The cat, when not totally black is a harmless enough familiar, so that some of you, I am sure, already has a cat as familiar. Maybe even without knowing it."
  Susan thought back on the summer before last. She and Linda had been sure they had a poltergeist or some other ghost in the cellar. Often when one of them came down there a big wooden plate that father had bought to make some project, was swaying from side to side as if pushed by an invisible hand. They even tried placing an old tape recorder in the cellar, but the noises on the tape were indistinct and could be only the muffled sounds of  family's activity or echoes from the laundry service across the road. Then one day Susan and Linda were in search of screws for their homemade letterboxes and once again they saw the big board swaying to and fro. But now there was a sound, a recognizable sound. A soft meowing came from behind the board. Susan and Linda ran up the stairs and told mom and dad that the ghost in the cellar was not a ghost, but a cat! Some hours later they went back down again, and the meowing resumed, louder, more insistent. They looked behind the board. A small black and white kitten looked up at them. Father with his long arms came to the rescue and pulled the kitten from behind the board They named it Meow, because it was fun to have a vat able to say its own name, and fed it milk and bread with liverwurst and it grew and thrived. 
  Unfortunately their mother was right when she told them that when a mother cat feels threatened, she moves her litter, and the last kitten to be moved is always the weakest. As the cat grew it became clear that it was almost blind and could not learn how to handle this handicap. It kept on just running straight ahead, banging it's head into things and getting caught in between table legs and in odd corners. In the end Susan, Linda and her mother found out why. All the black cats with white markings, like Meow, fell from the same tomcat, called Gravestone Tom. He was big and beautiful, with a shiny black fur and torn ears. He lived in the graveyard where he was often seen sunning himself on the gravestones. He dominated all the cats in the nearby streets, and chased all other tomcats out of his territory. He was father, brother, grandfather as well as uncle to Meow. In the end Meow was brought to the vet and euthanized. She was a danger to herself and a full time job for the family.
  Susan did not hear much of Thora's lesson on cats, but as she, maybe inevitably, drifted to owls, Susan pricked up her ears.