The Cat Who Only Meowed at Ghosts

The Cat Who Only Meowed at Ghosts

I never wanted a pet.

I’m not the kind of person who stops to scratch strays or watches cat videos online. But grief makes you do strange things.

I adopted Cashew the week after my grandmother died.

The shelter said he was three years old, quiet, well-behaved, and "strangely intuitive." I didn’t ask what that meant—I was too tired to care. The house had gone too quiet since Gran passed, and I didn’t want to be alone with the silence anymore.

Cashew was a sleek, gray-and-white tabby with yellow eyes and a permanent look of judgment. He barely made a sound. Even the staff said they’d never heard him meow.

That changed the night I brought him home.

At first, everything was fine. He explored the apartment, sniffed the couch legs, jumped on the windowsill like a proper little panther. Then, as I unpacked his food bowl, I heard it—

a single, sharp meow from the living room.

I froze. Not because of the sound itself—it was just a cat meowing—but because of where he was looking.

Cashew sat rigidly on the floor, tail wrapped tightly around him, ears forward. He stared at the far-right corner of the living room, just beside Gran’s old rocking chair.

The corner was empty.

I walked in slowly. “Cashew?”

He didn’t look at me. He just meowed again, louder.

It became a routine.

Every night around 9:30, Cashew would sit in that same spot, staring at that same corner, and let out a series of focused, deliberate meows. Not the hungry kind. Not bored or playful.

It was as if he were... talking to someone.

The first week, I thought it was cute. Maybe he was just weird. Cats are weird.

By the second week, it got unsettling.

I tried clapping near the corner—no spiders, no leaks, no hidden vents. I waved my phone flashlight over it. Nothing. Just a shadowy slice of wall between the bookshelf and the rocking chair.

Cashew meowed again. Almost urgently this time.

I began to dread 9:30.

Sometimes I tried to distract him with toys or snacks, but he always found his way back to that corner—meowing, watching, listening.

One night, I whispered, “What do you see, Cashew?”

He meowed softly, like an answer.

I didn’t believe in ghosts. Not really. But I did believe in my grandmother. And I believed in the strange feeling that started settling into my bones—like I wasn’t quite alone.

Gran used to say that cats could see things we couldn’t.

“Watch where a cat stares,” she told me once. “They’ve got one foot in the other world.”

I always laughed. But now, I wasn’t so sure.

The third week, I pulled Gran’s old blanket from the closet and draped it over the rocking chair, just to make the corner feel less eerie.

Cashew sniffed it, purred, and curled up underneath it.

That night, he didn’t meow.

The silence lasted two days. Then he started again—meowing at the corner, even when the blanket was there.

But something changed.

The rocking chair started to move.

Not in a horror-movie way. Just a soft creak. A gentle rock. Once, twice, back and forth, like someone was easing into it.

Cashew would sit beside it, tail flicking, purring now instead of meowing. I watched from the couch, unsure whether I should be afraid or comforted.

I chose comfort. I think I needed to.

A week later, I found the journal.

It was tucked into the back of Gran’s bookshelf, behind a row of dusty romance novels she always pretended not to like.

The leather was cracked, the spine loose. Her handwriting curled across every page like ivy.

Most of it was normal stuff—recipes, dreams, daily thoughts. But toward the end, the entries changed.

August 19th:

Saw her again today—my little sister. Same age as always. Sitting in the corner like when we were kids. I think she’s waiting.

August 27th:

The cat sees her. He meows whenever she comes. I think he likes her. Or maybe he just understands.

September 2nd:

Maybe I won’t be so alone after all.

I stared at the words for a long time. Gran never mentioned a sister. But I remembered now—an old black-and-white photo of two girls in pigtails. Gran once told me it was her cousin.

Now I wasn’t sure.

Cashew jumped up beside me and nuzzled the journal with his head. I looked down at him. “You knew, didn’t you?”

He blinked, slow and sure.

Since then, I’ve made peace with the corner.

I keep the blanket over the chair. I light a small candle on the windowsill around 9:30. Cashew curls beside it, meowing once, sometimes twice. The chair rocks gently.

And when I sit quietly enough, I swear I hear breathing.

Soft, steady.

Not mine. Not Cashew’s.

Someone else’s.

I still don’t tell most people. Who would believe me?

But the house no longer feels empty.

The silence doesn’t ache anymore.

And every night, when Cashew meows at the corner, I whisper,

“I see her too.”

Author’s Note:

Sometimes the ones we love find ways to stay.

Sometimes, a cat is just a cat.

And sometimes, they’re something more.