I don't believe in ghosts; at least if by ghosts one means the survival of some sort of consciousness after death that attempts to communicate with the living.

This is because I don't believe in the survival of consciousness, or personality, after death. But I don't understand a lot of scientific things. For instance, I don't believe in TV or telephones or fax machines or even computers. I cannot grasp their possibility, so I just use them. I can understand a microwave oven because it's just another kind of heat, so I believe in microwave ovens.

But there is one kind of ghost that I can understand. I've heard it referred to as a "psychic photograph" or a psychic memory. This is where something is imprinted on a location, some action, or some thing, and it just repeats, like a tape in a VCR. (I also believe in VCRs and DVD players.) I don't understand physics much, really any; I had trouble with geometry because I couldn't remember the formulas so I never got further than that, but I think physics could explain the fact of a psychic memory someday.

Once, many years ago, I was sitting in my living room reading, with the TV on. The cats were in, but they were asleep in various places; then I heard a cat meow, just as if one of mine was trying to get my attention, which none of them ever did. If they wanted my attention they just came up and sat on me, but it was a definite meow, in the room, not from outside anywhere. I looked around and all the cats were asleep, no one even appeared to have heard the meow, so I just blew it off; I mean, stranger things have happened, right?

A little while later the cat meowed again. This time I was curious enough that I put down my book and turned off the TV and just sat and waited. Sure enough, there was another meow. This time I could locate it exactly because I was waiting and listening. It came from behind a bentwood rocker sitting by the couch. I could see all around the rocker and there was no cat there. As if satisfied that I had heard it the cat stopped meowing for the night and I went back to my book.

One of the things wrong with the ghost hunter shows I watch on TV is that they tell each other everything. Someone will walk into a dark room and say, "Wow! Did you feel that? It suddenly got colder, right here and I felt a presence that didn't want me to enter the room!" And everyone runs over and says, "yes, yes, I feel it, too!"

So I didn't mention the invisible cat because who would believe it, or be interested? And because it happened just to me, if it happened to anyone else then I would discuss it.

Sometime later my son was sitting in the bentwood rocker and I was on the couch reading and the cat meowed. I didn't react or say anything, but I saw him look around, as I had, and then start watching TV again. Later, the cat meowed again and he was quicker to locate it than I had been, perhaps because he was closer and he twisted in the chair and looked behind him. He saw me looking at him and said, "A cat meowed back there," and I said, I know. Then I told him I had heard it before. It didn't meow again and it being one of those unexplainable things we didn't discuss it much. What was there to say?

Those of you who live with cats know that the sound of a cat eating dry food is very carrying and distinctive. It cannot be mistaken for anything else to a cat person. Sometime later I heard a cat eating dry food in the kitchen. Now I always leave a bowl of dry food out on the counter for those who want a snacky, so this is not unusual. What was unusual is that there were no cats in the kitchen.

I didn't mention this either, but a month or so later my older daughter was visiting. We were watching television and a cat starting crunching dry food in the kitchen. I didn't pay any attention, but apparently my daughter noticed that all the cats who lived there were with us and she informed me, "there's a cat eating in the kitchen." I told her that I heard it and she said that there weren't any cats in the kitchen and I told her that I knew that also.

So, without prompting or being told to expect anything, two independent witnesses heard the same things that I had, and in fact, we heard them together also. I think that it was a psychic memory of a cat who once lived there and still meowed, maybe for food, and then went in the kitchen and ate the food, as it had many times in life.

I had a china cabinet that was tall and was placed against an open stairway. My cats loved to go up the stairs and step onto the top of it to take naps. In fact, it was such a favorite spot of theirs that I folded a blanket and put it on top of the cabinet for their comfort when napping. These cats didn't like each other, but the top was big enough to accommodate two of them without touching, but if a third tried to squeeze in someone would curse and leave. There was nearly always one or two cats asleep on top of the china cabinet. They also liked being up high so they could observe what was going on in the room. The top had kind of a pie crust rim around it and sometimes I could see little ears and big eyes peeking over the edge, on watch, like Frederick Fleet in the crow's nest of the Titanic.

After the ghost cat or memory or whatever it was started making itself known all of the cats abandoned the china cabinet. Not one would sleep on it or sit on it or have anything to do with it. From this I inferred that something had happened, but what? What could make all five cats, all at once, suddenly give up a space they had fought over before?

I cannot believe that the owners of the ghost cat memory who lived there before me also had a high piece of furniture in the same place and the cat memory was appearing there also, but I also couldn't believe that a conscious ghost of a cat had decided to sleep on top of my china cabinet. Cats are supposed to be psychic, but not one of mine ever seemed to hear the ghost cat, either meowing or eating, but not one of them would get on the china cabinet, as long as we lived there. After we moved they would get on top of it again.

I cannot explain any of this, but I assure you it happened just as I am telling it. My older daughter will affirm it, but my son, who is grown up now, has gotten hazy on the meow he heard, and thinks maybe he didn't, or that it was one of our cats. He only heard it the once, maybe that is why. But I remember, if he doesn't, and he did once hear a cat that wasn't there.

I offer this story because I enjoyed having a ghost cat and I hope that the people who live there now pay attention to it, if it calls.