Hello Mr. Diddles.

Mr. Diddles was the name that we gave the cat that we befriended in Romania while we were touring there as a travelling circus. He strolled into camp one evening and took up residence in the clown tent. Mr. Diddles loved to be a part of the day-to-day action and then would sit on the edge of the ring blocks and watch the show. Everyone in the circus loved Mr. Diddles. Where he came from and why no one really knows. He just kind of showed up evening. Some of the clowns were afraid to be alone in their tent with him after dark, and a couple even went so far as to quit altogether. Not sure why. Mr. Diddles never acted mean or scary in any way to anyone. I guess some people are just afraid of cats like some people are afraid of clowns or heights. Now why am I telling this story about Mr. Diddles if he is such a sweet and unassuming cat? Well, read on and you will see that all is not as it seems……

One evening while crossing the Atlantic on our way to do shows in the US and return home, a storm suddenly and seemingly from nowhere sprung up from the ocean. The ship tossed and turned and even the most seaworn of sailors on the ship that night was heaving up their dinner and trying to keep it down. The captain said he had never seen a storm as ferocious as this one in all his 30 years of sailing. Some sailors said it was a bad omen to have women on the ship and that’s where the storm had come from, but we had crossed the Atlantic several times that year and the women were on board every time so it couldn’t be that. The only thing new was Mr. Diddles.

During the storm he was walking around below deck like nothing was going on. He was purring and rubbing up against the performers who by now thoroughly sick and the whole below deck smelled like vomit. It did not phase him that the ship was being tossed around so violently and people were losing their dinner all over the deck and below deck. His eyes though were what caught my attention. Usually, he had green eyes and a small pupil, but tonight during this storm they were bright yellow almost like flames in his eye sockets and the pupils had almost disappeared. It struck me as strange that he almost seemed to be enjoying all the commotion and upheaval. I watched him for a long time that night and concluded that this cat was no cat at all.

Mrs. Wilhelm the head acrobat, had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with Mr. Diddles from the time that he showed up. She had said we had, had more accidents and people quit since he showed up and he seemed to enjoy the pain of the people in the accidents. No one believed her of course because she was always going on about something being out of place or not right. The gypsy fortune teller we had in the circus was also someone who didn’t like the cat or want to be around him and kept saying we should drop him off at a local humane society before something bad happened.

After a couple of hours, the storm seemed to ease a little and we all got our bearings. Then I noticed the cat sitting perched on top of one of the sails that had been taken down and wrapped up. As I watched he swiped at the rope holding the sail and it came lose and the wind caught it and it swung wildly in the wind and knocked two sailors overboard. The cat seemed to be happy with himself. Then he noticed me watching him and hopped down and walked purposefully over to where I was holding onto the mast to keep my balance and not get sent overboard.

He brushed up against my leg as if to get me to let go of the mast and pet him, I was too scared to let go for fear of being thrown overboard like the sailors had been. This made him angry, I could tell because he started brimming with electricity, it emanated from his fur like little lightning bolts. As I watched some of these tiny lightning bolts struck my leg, and it sent shockwaves of pain radiating up my leg so much so that I let go of the mast to hug my leg tight to myself. At that he started purring, expecting me to pet him, but as soon as the pain gave way, I went right back to holding that mast. I was getting the uneasy feeling that Mr. Diddles wanted me to let go long enough to be thrown overboard.

As I looked down his eyes seemed to catch mine in an unfriendly and uneasy gaze and then a burst of light went through them, and he almost growled at me and then his claws lashed out and scratched my legs. He shredded my lower pant legs. I could through my tears see blood dripping down my shoe where he had scratched me. He meowed at this and rubbed up against me again. I screamed at him to leave me alone and that I was not letting go to be thrown overboard. This seemed to insight him to more anger, and then the storm started to get violent. Now I knew Mr. Diddles was the cause of the storm.

The storm grew so violent that I thought we were going to capsize, the captain started giving orders and screamed at his men over the howl of the wind and rain to strap everything down and prepare for the worst. Mr. Diddles just sat watching with a look of total amusement on his face. Suddenly, one of my performers came running up the stairs almost sideways screaming that the hull had been breached and water was flooding the hold. We were going to lose all the animals and equipment if we didn’t do something and fast. The captain gave more orders. I looked around and saw that the cat had disappeared.

I struggled to get to the stairs down below deck to see the damage and to see where Mr. Diddles had gone. I almost slid down the stairs and when I got below deck, I could see the water rising, and in the middle of it was a clear spot where no water pooled and rushed in it went around it and that’s where I found Mr. Diddles sitting almost laughing. People were scrambling here there and everywhere trying desperately to save animals, people and equipment.

Just then the small crack in the hull that had been letting water in slowly got bigger and more water came rushing in, it was like he was trying to sabotage everything. Yet no water touched him or his little spot of dryness. One of sailors noticed what I was looking at and yelled that it was the cat, we needed to throw the cat overboard to save the ship and ourselves. At this the cat turned in his direction and a light shot through his eyes and the sailor then got thrown through the stairs to the top deck, now we had no way out of the lower decks. We were trapped. As me and everyone down there suddenly came to this realization, we no longer saw Mr. Diddles anywhere. All we could smell was wet straw, rain and sea water and an odor like rotten eggs.

Mr. Diddles had vanished or so we thought into thin air. After looking around for another way out of the lower decks we saw a small fragile looking Mr. Diddles with green eyes crouched under a barrel, he was shivering and scared. Whatever had been inside him was gone now and he was just a plain old cat again. What or whoever it was had, had their fun with us this night. Slowly the water subsided, and the storm came to a sudden and abrupt holt above deck. Now some sailors scrambled to seal up the hole and try to salvage the hull and make it seaworthy again to make the rest of the trip.

For the rest of the journey, which was a day and a half, no one would go near or touch the cat, he stayed at one end of the hold, and we all stayed at the other end. We weren’t making the mistake of getting near him again. One of the sailors who had been below deck during the storm had suddenly grown ill and was talking in a language no one understood and was becoming more agitated and violent as the day went by. When we docked in New York, we disembarked the ship and unloaded and prepared for the journey to Chicago.

While in Chicago I received a teletype from the captain, and he told me that he had kept the cat onboard and the sailor who had gotten sick had been taken to see a priest and the priest had told him that the sailor was possessed by the devil. He the said that during the exorcism the sailor had died, but nothing more happened to him, his crew, or the ship. He said it was the weirdest thing and the most terrifying Hallowe’en night he had ever witnessed or lived through.