Not the ghosts of the Civil War

One problem with jokingly blaming all the ordinary strange things that come with living some place--losing one's can opener, finding a five in one's purse, etc.--on the ghosts of the Civil War is that, even if you don't really believe that the ghosts of the Civil War haunt your house, you've planted the possibility in your mind. Which brings us to last night. I arrived home a little later than usual, after having been thoroughly kicked around by my day, let the cats in and the dog out, found nothing to eat in the kitchen but rice and raisins, and so sat down to eat my sad meal on my couch while reading AnaLouise Keating. All is silent and then, from the kitchen, there's this voice. It sounded like a small child yelling something, possibly "I want you" but, as loud as the voice was--and it was loud--the words sounded muffled, as if they were traveling from some great distance and I could not quite make them out. Over and over, there's this "I want you"-type noise, coming from my kitchen. I lean forward and peer in, but I don't see anything. Still, the voice. I'm ready to run over to the neighbors' when I notice that Mrs. Wigglebottom is utterly unafraid. Now, this is the dog that hid under the end table downstairs with the orange cat from the hermit crab that fell out of my pajamas in the upstairs bathroom, and regularly hides in the upstairs bathroom from hideously scary things like rain. So, if she's not afraid, the source of the noise must be something she's used to. Have the ghosts of the Civil War befriended my dog while I'm at work? I go into the kitchen. And there, sitting on floor in front of a large hairball/food mixture is the little cat. She looks at the puke, looks at me, and opens her mouth and a very human-sounding noise comes out. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would have never believed it. If she'd just left the hairball sitting in the middle of the kitchen and gone upstairs to sleep, I would be writing you right now about my freaky ghostly encounter. I would have never suspected the cat of that noise. It was the weirdest thing.