Does mysterious “ghost fur” keep appearing on your floors?

Have you ever had a strangely recurring cat-related thing happen in your living space? I have. It’s happening right now. Clumps of fur keep showing up on my kitchen floor.

Let me explain. The kitchen is a small space. It is not a walled-off kitchen, but is adjacent to the rest of the living room. Also, we have no carpets in the entire house. This is an on-purpose decision, and it’s the first time I have lived without carpets. Carpets catch and hold a lot of cat hair. Lack of carpets makes it really easy to clean up cat hair. I like that.

So, why should it be so strange that little fur clumps keep showing up on the kitchen floor? I will explain.

I understand that with a lack of carpet in the house, cat fur will move around much more freely. Patterns may become apparent that I’d never noticed with carpets. Carpets cover a multitude of things (yech!). That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want carpets. With multiple cats, carpets are just more work than they’re worth. I sure don’t miss the endless days and hours of vacuuming and cleaning carpets, trying to get all the cat hair up. A hard floor is much much easier.

But a hard floor makes me much more aware of these strange new patterns happening in the kitchen.

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I don’t know when I started to notice this. It was fairly recent. I walked into the kitchen and noticed tufts of hair on the floor. I thought nothing of it, swept the hair up, and walked away.

About a half hour later, I came back into the kitchen for something. I had been working in a room close to the kitchen. The cats had been sleeping — nary a peep or a growl or a cat fight. And there they were again on the floor — those tufts of hair.

Some ghost is having a fun time with me, maybe. Some ghost thinks my tendency to clean clean clean is really amusing and wants me to do it more.

I do vacuum at least every other day. I never see tufts of hair arranged together so closely anywhere else in the house. Sure, there are hair tumbleweeds here and there — you expect that, especially with six cats and a hardwood floor.

It seems to come back, in steady frequency. I’ll sweep or vacuum it up. Sometimes, not long after, with no cat activity whatsoever, that hair is back. Believe it or not, the cats generally don’t hang around the kitchen floor — it’s way too small. They’ll go on the counter, or hover around in the hallway on the other side of the kitchen counter.

The hair is always grayish, soft and fine. It looks like medium length hair, perhaps the soft undercoat of some kind of cat. It couldbe Zorro’s fur, and he’s the only one whose fur comes close to looking like this stuff on the kitchen floor. But Zorro is never nearby when I find the new batches of hair, and he’s usually sleeping during the day, when the hair often shows up.

Is it a ghost cat?

If it’s a ghost, it’s got a sense of humor. And my cats don’t seem bothered by it or aware of it at all. I’m not seeing them staring at nothing, or the wall, or a place on the ceiling.

The previous owner of this house loved cats. He had two of them. I know that one was old and probably died here before the previous owner left. In fact, I think I discovered where the owner may have buried the cat — in a strange mound to the side of the woods, covered with daffodils. It’s all speculation. Also, both cats were grayish.

Or maybe it’s one of my former cats, saying hello! I’m not closed to the possibility of ghosts — I’ve had my own experiences, all good — and heck, it seems a better explanation than anything else I’ve figured out yet.

Does Zorro need more furminating?

I’ll admit that I’ve been lax lately with Zorro’s brushing, and he has a beautiful white (and sometimes grayish) long coat. The next step would be furminating Zorro steadily for a few days, and seeing if the hair clumps stop showing up.

Are patterns in the air causing this?

We’re not running a fan now, and there’s no fan near the kitchen. (Alternatively, that could be why the hair keeps appearing.) The frequency is what makes me sit up and notice. How can it keep coming back so fast? It’s like an out of control Twilight Zone script!

Is it coming from under appliances in the kitchen?

There’s only one appliance that stuff could gather under in the kitchen — an old stove. I’ve vacuumed under it thoroughly, and the hair keeps showing up.

It’s amusing, and it doesn’t bother me. If it’s a ghost, it knows me well! I love to clean, anyway- what’s one more sweep of the broom or pass with the Dyson vacuum?

Have you ever had anything like this happen in your home? Share your stories in the comments!

More by Catherine Holm:

• 6 Massive Life Lessons My Cats Taught Me without Trying
• Do You Have a Velcro Cat? Here are 7 Ways to Tell
• 8 Ways I’m EXACTLY Like My Cats

About Catherine Holm: Told that she is funny but doesn’t know it, accused of being an unintentional con artist by her husband, quiet, with frequent unannounced bursts into dancing liveliness, Cat Holm loves writing about, working for, and living with cats. She is the author of The Great Purr, the cat-themed memoir Driving with Cats: Ours for a Short Time, the creator of Ann Catanzaro cat fantasy story gift books, and the author of two short story collections. She loves to dance, be outside whenever possible, read, play with cats, make music, do and teach yoga, and write. Cat lives in the woods, which she loves as much as really dark chocolate, and gets regular inspiration shots along with her double espresso shots from the city.