Nightly Visits of a Strange Cat in a Village House

One time I came to the village to visit relatives. The house is a typical five-walled cottage, the locals slept in the living room and on the veranda, I was in the room that's a kitchen-living room with a stove, on an ordinary Soviet-era couch. It closes with solid doors, no gaps. When the cat occasionally comes — a huge ginger furry faggot — it scratches under the door and they let it in.

At night I wake up from a firm feeling that someone is watching me in the dark. The room is partly lit by a streetlamp, but a cherry tree has grown thick in front of the windows and overall it's pretty dark. I already knew what sleep paralysis was, had it repeatedly in childhood and adolescence, got used to it, and I understand the phenomenon well. This wasn't it, definitely. Someone, fuck, is watching, I can feel it with my ass. I reach for the wall lamp, turn it on. Above me, on the back of the couch, sits a cat. More like half-lying even, lounging. And it's staring at me without looking away. I'm seeing it for the first time, absolutely definitely not ours, small, neat, colored like an Abyssinian. Strange, but whatever, a cat's a cat, I'll figure it out in the morning — I thought, and turned off the light. Trying to fall asleep — can't, I feel that someone's watching me. Tossed and turned, got up, took the cat and put it out the door, onto the veranda.

In the morning I ask my relatives, why the fuck did you let a cat in for me, it's not ours. The relatives say they didn't let any cat in, there was no cat, I'm making shit up, probably dreamed it. Well, dunno, whatever.

At night I wake up again — same thing again. I turn on the light, the cat is sitting there, in the exact same spot, looking at me. Put it out the door again. In the morning I tell my neighbor about the strange cat that stares at people at night — he laughs, says yeah, there is one. Nobody's, nobody owns it, and hardly anyone's seen it during the day, at night it somehow gets into houses and sleeps there. Sleeps here, sleeps there. The house cats don't touch it and don't even notice it. People don't care either, it doesn't climb on tables, looks clean, just sleeps on chairs or couches, sleeps a bit and leaves.

So it slept on my couch for about a week, then disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared.