Sugar the cat’s first post about him in Jun 2020, had the distinction of being the most visited post on this site for some time. For some reason, he isn’t visited anymore. Because he should be a permanent star, given his remarkable story, I’m bringing him back.
I get my information about him from Denis Brian’s 1982 autobiography of parapsychologist J. B. Rhine (The Enchanted Voyager: The Life of J. B. Rhine). Not just an ESP card experimenter as many people think, Rhine was an accomplished investigator of many unusual events. He visited Sugar, interviewed witnesses, and concluded that his story was authentic.
In 1950, the Woods family in Anderson, California had to move to Oklahoma. They had a beige cat, Sugar, who was a tough little customer – he routinely fought with dogs. But he had a phobia of riding in cars, so they were afraid of taking him on the drive to Oklahoma. A neighbor offered to adopt him, so they left him with the neighbors when they headed off to their new home.
Unknown to the Woods, Sugar disappeared 3 weeks after they left. The neighbors remained in communication with the Woods, but they were afraid to tell them about Sugar.
Then, almost a year later, a beige cat jumped in the window of the new house in Oklahoma, landed on the shoulder of Mrs Woods, and began purring.
Sugar had had a hip deformity, and so did this cat. He had the same personality too, soon fighting with Oklahoma coyotes. As impossible as it seemed, they decided that this was Sugar.
The neighbors from California came for a visit, still worried about Sugar, and were astounded to meet him there.
What is this? It’s not telepathy, or clairvoyance or precognition. Cats, like many other mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, have a strong homing ability, but this is not that either, for Sugar was not trying to find his way back home – he was trying to reach a place 1500 miles away that he’d never been to before. Even if he’d a telepathic connection to a member of the Woods family, how could they direct him, unless, I suppose, through their eyes he had seen the route?
The usual assumption is that Sugar was a supercat, that he simply had phenomenal powers, which explains nothing. Then there is always the favorite explanation of the skeptics, when they can’t invoke coincidence – that everyone was lying.
But there is another possibility, rarely mentioned – that Sugar had assistance.
Think of Odysseus trying to find his way home from Troy. He doesn’t get there using only his wits. The goddess Athena comes to his rescue again and again, sometimes redirecting him, sometimes by protecting him from dangers that he doesn’t see. The people of the past took such ideas seriously. Guardian spirits come into play in all the old mythologies, and they remain in the beliefs, thinking and practices of many people today.
Odysseus had to cross maybe 300 miles (450 km) of the Aegean sea, and he started our with several ships and his troops. Little Sugar set out alone, and had to go five times as far.
The thing to remember about Sugar is this – he really did that. Odysseus, like Achilles and others at the battle for Troy was a real historical person, but most of what we read in his story is probably fiction. Sugar is a fact. What he did I write of as paranormal because we don’t know how he did it.
The details of Sugar’s odyssey are unknown. Maybe he hitched a ride on the way. Made friends with someone? I have no trouble imagining a tractor-trailer driver befriending a cat, but Sugar did have that phobia about vehicles.
Some will not object with a scientific approach, but argue that gods or spiritual guardians would not find a cat important enough. Well, who says humans are more important in that realm than cats? Who says cats don’t have gods, or guardians? Who but ourselves has put us at the top of the existential pyramid?
Obviously, I don’t know the answer. An answer may be a long time coming. In my novel Skol, effective investigation of these things only begins in the 22nd century, when superintelligent AI computers take an interest in paranormal phenomena.
Nothing is going to happen though until we give up this idea that we can avoid enigmatic phenomena by simply denying that they exist.
The beige cat in the photo above is not Sugar. That’s Toby, a member of my family for 15 years or so. When he was 2 years old, Toby was hit by a taxi – with his face badly damaged, and no ability to move his legs – a quadriplegic – we might have given up on him but for the vet whose care he was in. The vet told me that, although he appeared to have a spinal cord injury, we should give him a chance because cats have remarkable recuperative powers.
When we picked him up a week later, he could stand up, but was unable to walk. The vet told me that he would continue to improve; not, he said, because the spinal chord was healing, but purely through adaptation.
Toby learned to walk again, and the following winter, confined to our house, I watched him stumble up and down a steep flight of stairs, over and over, week after week, until the next spring I was able to let him outside again, and watch him leap happily in the air, with almost perfect co-ordination, at flying insects. Occasionally I saw him lose his balance, then correct it quickly, which I would see again and again throughout the rest of his ilfe. In time I would witness him, a neutered cat by the way (if you wait until they are fully grown, neutering takes away none of their physical powers), fight not only other cats, but go toe-to-toe with wild racoons. This cat who, had he been human would probably have spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair as a quadriplegic, really did that. We think we are superior to so many other creatures on this planet, but we don’t know this at all.
Toby never had to head off to Oklahoma, but, had he needed to, I know he would have done it with courage and determination. Long before I read about Sugar, Toby taught me that cats should never be underestimated.
Alan Conrad 