September 15, 1890

Agatha Christie (September 15, 1890 to January 12,  1976) wrote, a lot -- 79 novels and short story collections by one count,  We have this short story for a feline glance. The story does not feature her later detectives, but is in the same mood which created Hercule Poirot as a detective who disliked cats.

"The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael" was published in 1933. It is one of Christie's supernatural mysteries. The story begins as the

trifling affair of the grey cat. For some reason or other the thing was getting on my nerves. I dreamed of cats–I continually fancied I heard him. Now and then in the distance I caught a glimpse of the beautiful animal."

The suspense builds when:  

We were sitting in the green drawing room, as on the night of my arrival, when it came — the loud insistent miawing of a cat outside the door. But this time it was unmistakably angry in its tone — a fierce cat yowl, long-drawn and menacing. And then as it ceased, the brass hook outside the door was rattled violently, as by a cat's paw. 

Shortly, -- it is after all a short story -- we discover  a man  appears possessed by the spirit of a bloodthirsty cat. A cat which gives itself away, when after dinner, the eponymouse character leaps to chase a mouse, and squats then, beside the wainscotting where the mouse is hiding. 

We forgive Christie the inept description of the rattle made by a cat's paw, because she also includes in her story a book, "An ancient and curious work on the possibilities of the metapmorphosis of human beings into animals."