Do you believe in ghosts?

Dylan and I watch a lot of ghost-hunting type shows: Ghost Hunters (the standard by which all others shall be judged forthwith), Ghost Adventures (affectionately known as the Ghost Bros.), Fact or Faked, Destination Truth, Haunted Collector (and apparently we have an unabashed love of all things SyFy. Just don't tell North Carolina as they might try to block that too) but when it comes to actual *ghosts*, I've never seen one or had any paranormal experience.  I mean, we always joke about random sounds and flickering lights as being *ghosts* but never with any seriousness.  Our house is only 12 years old and to the best of our knowledge is not situated on an Indian burial ground or 1700s coven meeting place.  It could happen, I guess, but the likelihood of our piece of Maryland having anything so cool is pretty remote as cool stuff only happens to cool people.  Which we are not. Ahem.

Last week our cat died.  She was 14 and sick and arthritic and diabetic and even the vet could give us no assurances that treatment would help her so we made the gut-wrenching decision to have her put to sleep. (Aside, I hate that phrase but the other choices: euthanized, put down, etc. seem so clinical and *evil* as we did what we did out of love, out of not wanting her to suffer for our selfishness of wanting her around longer.)

Yesterday morning Dylan saw that we had a message on the voicemail and played it back. It was the vet's office letting us know that Bonnie's ashes were in and we could come and pick them up (yes, we have our pets cremated and keep them with us.  Her handsome wooden box will go right next to her brother Clyde's.)  He went upstairs to take a shower and I sat down to breakfast.  As I was doing my usual multitasking of eating and checking Twitter and facebook, out of the corner of my eye I caught movement.  In the tenth of a second the image registered on my retinas, I swear it was Bonnie crossing the floor just as she always did then disappearing like *that*.

What does one do in this instance? Why take to social media to relate the occurrence of course.  Some friends commented on the facebook post that they had experience it too with their pets and rather than being scary, it was actually kind of comforting. And it was.  Though I teared up immediately reading their comments, I had to smile knowing that while she might be on another plane of existence now, she was still here and watching over us.

Though if she starts crying for food at 3 am again, all bets are off.