One of my former neighbours in my home town of Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, was a widow whose son was a sailor in the merchant navy.
He did not like to tell his mother when he would be coming home on leave because he was afraid she would worry if he was delayed on the way. But his mother always knew anyway — thanks to the family cat.
This pet was very attached to this young man and, an hour or two before he arrived, it sat on the front door mat and began miaowing loudly as if equipped with some sixth sense which told it that he was on the way.
The cat was never wrong and this early-warning system gave our neighbour time to get her son’s room ready and prepare him a meal in the certainty that he would turn up soon afterwards.
This is just one of many examples of animals displaying the apparently psychic tendencies more normally associated with some of their human counterparts.
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