"The Cat Sisters"

The Swamp Road Chronicles^®

"The Cat Sisters"

(Editor's Note: This report is not of a paranormal nature, but it is horrible and awfully creepy, so I have included it in our Chronicles.)

Dear Swamp Road Chronicles,

Hello, again. I am Beau Cook; I wrote to you once about a true encounter I had with Swamp Road Sally that you entitled "Miss Ruth," I want to share with you another story that I am personally connected to. You may remember that I was a milkman for over 40 years and Palmer Road was part of my route. The story below is absolutely real.

There were two old ladies who lived on Palmer about a mile from Swamp Road. They lived in a terribly run-down old house that I once heard a man describe as "The ugliest house on Palmer Road." It was a sorry sight for sure. The old ladies were sisters, about a year apart in age. I was told that neither of them had ever been married. They had no children, but they had cats! I mean Cats! Every color, every size and age. Every breed of cat in the world, I think, was represented in that pool of cats, to one percentage or another. I'm told that a large group of cats is called a 'clowder', but that is too weak a name for the HERD of cats they had. I'm guessing they owned about 50 or 60 cats. Twice a week I delivered 10 gallons of whole milk to their house. I sometimes saw huge empty cat chow bags in their trash. I believe those cats were well-fed.

In December of 1989 I was in a bad accident with my milk truck. I had attempted to stop at a busy intersection, but the road there was icy; I slid through the stop sign and was t-boned by a semi. Obviously, I wasn't killed, but I was critically injured and in a coma for 3 weeks. My milk truck was totaled. There was no one to service my customers, so they simply had to provide for themselves as best they could until I was able to work again. I was off work for 3 months.

As I was at home healing, I learned from the local newspaper that the cat-sisters had both passed away.

They had no phone and there had been over a foot of snow, so the ladies couldn't get out. They had no family or friends, apparently, so they weren't found until about 3 weeks after they had passed. The coroner determined that one had passed about 2 days before the other; both died of natural causes.

The coroner's assistant back then was a man who was one of my milk delivery customers. He liked to talk a bit when I came by and one day he told me, in confidence, the full story of the sisters' deaths. He said that the sisters had died of natural causes, but they had been dead for 3 weeks in a house full of hungry cats. He said their bones had been picked clean.

The cats were all euthanized, and the house was condemned and later burned by the local fire department for practice.

The unpleasant elements of the story were not made public.

A nice, new ranch-style home has been built on the site recently. I guess it would be unkind to stop and tell them about the history of the piece of ground their new home rests upon. So, I guess I won't.

Thanks,

Beau Cook

As submitted by Beau Cook 7-16-2023, Baltimore Ohio.

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