If you’re a big horror fan, you’ve likely noticed that before any other character notices something strange haunting their new house, their pets are acutely aware of what’s going on.
But while most of us likely won’t have to worry about our houses suddenly roaring “get out” in the middle of the night, there is a distinct possibility that the previous owners left behind something unusual or even creepy before we moved in.
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And considering that cats and dogs often have keener senses of smell than we do, it is genuinely plausible for them to discover something’s wrong with our homes before we have any idea.
So while one cat owner went to the lengths he did out of concern for his furry friend’s well-being, he eventually discovered that the cat had his own reasons to be worried.
Up until the past two weeks, one man would describe his 14-year-old cat Tucker (not pictured) as easy-going, well-mannered, energetic, and healthy.
Although he explained in a Reddit post that Tucker was as animated as ever when he started pawing at one of the walls while making excited chirping noises, he took to simply lying on the floor and staring at it after a few days.
The man couldn’t figure out whether this was because there were bugs behind the wall or whether the cars outside were causing light reflections that fascinated Tucker, but he soon felt compelled to find out.
That was because Tucker was becoming so fixated on the wall that his owner worried he was developing dementia or some other unexplained illness.
As he put it, “He is barely eating, only using his litter box about half the time, and I haven’t actually seen the poor cat sleep since this all started.” Stranger still was the fact that this didn’t happen gradually, but was more like a switch had suddenly flipped inside his head.
And when the man took Tucker to the vet, they were just as stumped as he was because the cat was in good health despite being slightly underweight.
Out of options and concerned for the cat he’s cared for over the past 10 years, the man finally decided to cut open the wall with a jabsaw and see what was back there.
The good news is that this immediately perked Tucker up and the man was eventually able to conclude his cat wasn’t sick.
But while there weren’t any burrowing bugs behind the wall, the man shared in a follow-up comment that there was a coal chute he had never seen before that led to a sealed-off basement he had no access to or prior knowledge about.
Yet while the man was a little disturbed by this secret basement, he was more worried about what had to have happened down there in the last two weeks to make Tucker so concerned.
However, finding out would involve getting past a very rusty grate and he couldn’t do that alone.
So he enlisted the help of a friend named Hank and after they got through the grate together, the man climbed down a ladder to see what was in this long-abandoned basement.
And as he said in yet another follow-up comment , the problem seemed to be that one of the walls down there had buckled, which exposed the basement to the elements. As a result, the basement floor was covered by about an inch of standing water.
In the man’s words, “The sudden inch of water probably opened up a universe of new smells for the poor guy. And let us be clear, the air in the basement is absolutely rancid.”
That means the mystery of what was bugging Tucker was pretty much solved, but there was also a crumpled up garbage bag that the man never learned the contents of. That’s because finding out what was in it would involve pulling up stones to get to it and he didn’t want to risk collapsing his house.
It’ll have to remain a mystery.
h/t: Reddit | tuckerTroubles14
