Strangers,
Have you ever seen a cat with wings? We have. Not in person, but in the archives. Now, if you’re imagining big, beautiful feathers, go ahead and let go of that fantasy. But a cat with wings was what we found. And that cat’s name was Thomas. Well, probably Thomas. More on that later.
Anyway, the story began in West Virginia, back in 1959. This was pre-Mothman—that troublemaker wouldn’t make his first appearance until 1966—so we have to imagine that the news of a winged cat was a pretty big deal. It certainly was for the town of Pineville, where the 1960 census put the population at around 1200. It was a place built on a cleared out “pitch pine forest” — that’s according to the official website — but plenty of that woodland remained. And that’s where our story begins: with a boy, a tree, and a cat.
According to The Berkeley Post-Herald, It was early June when young Douglas Shelton and his friends headed out to the woods to hang out. Being that it was 1959, Douglas was 15, and he didn’t have a PlayStation, this seems reasonable. What they came upon out there, though, was something that we can only describe as straight out of the Pokémon playbook: a white, fluffy, “Persian-like cat” that seemed to have “nine-inch wings.”