Interesting story, but I don't think I'd shove a dead cat back in the wall. I guess it's a tradition of a sort.

Oh I wouldn't put it past... wait a minute, whats that scratching sound. Dear god! He's in the house and he's trying to kill me! Lucy, board up the doors and get my shotgun!

If how you think would be the correct way, lots of historic stuff in Europe and elsewhere and in the USA should be cleaned up pretty fast because they are relics from stupid barbaric times and actions and nowadays they are looked after with great care.

Wel... I hope you are not how the majority thinks. I think I begin to understand why Native Americans partly have so much problems with the way modern white folks treat the historic artifacts of those Natives...!

And please, Ben B. do not call all Arabs morons- They do not all suppress women, or ride camels and shoot AK47's at infidels.

Have you seen the satalite footage of that google maps link I posted? It's the cats doing!

Slavery was cultural. It was never admirable. The Inquisitions were cultural. They bear only the very worst of messages from their perpetrators. Repression of women was (and is... I'm looking at you, moron Arabs) cultural. It was never admirable.

Anthrax is natural. It is not beneficial. Cyanide is natural. You still shouldn't ingest it. Animal venom is natural. Doesn't mean you should go out looking to be snake-bitten, or collecting tissue that has gone necrotic from a brown-recluse's bite.

Learn to see the world for what it is, not with some nonsensical veneer of "cool" you manufacture because something is unfamiliar or foreign. Sometimes, when something is discovered that looks odd or highly unusual, it isn't because "cool" people did these things or it's "a lost art." A lot of past practices were stupid at best, and superstitious nonsense at worst. Putting a dead animal in your wall is one of those things. Reacting in any other way than respectfully and carefully interring it and sterilizing the area where it was found is barbaric, not to mention stupid.

Well concidering that America was just being colonized at that point, it makes perfect sense that a house wouldn't be that old. I did a google maps search for Ugborough. Apparently that town has been shrowded in darkness for hundreds of years, and I bet that cat has something to do with it!

http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&q=plymouth%20Ugborough&um=1&ie=UTF-8& sa=N&tab=wl

But I defintely don't agree with Ben B. - However tragic for the animal in question- or in some other cultures in Days and cultures Past even the dead adversaries... that has been the cultural-natural way of things. It is fact and part of history. Perhaps good that we have in a sence grown over such practices, but still not a reason to just say the people of those times and practices were just backward fools. Different times and different knowledge. That's all. We nowadays most likely do other things that to them would look utterly daft. And this funeral director has a sence and respect for that part of history. So to my mind he's also definitely not a narrowminded moron- on the contrary I should even say.

As for messing up the natural recycling process, I'm sure that there are just a few more cats that weren't mummified throughout out history so it's probably going to be okay.

That made my day!

My cousin was renovating his backyard in Halifax and came across bones. He called the police and the bones turned out to belong to a horse that died during the great Halifax explosion.

My family is in the home renovation and remodeling business here in Northern California. We have found a number of creatures - alive and dead - in the course of business, but never anything remotely as exciting as a mummified cat! Well, houses here in Sacramento are typically less than 100 years old. A few are older, but certainly not 400 years old. A pity.

The icing on the cake in this case is that Mr. Parson is a funeral director! I imagine that he knows something of mummies - perhaps very much indeed given his line of work. I wonder if dear old pussy underwent procedures to ensure mummification - as opposed to ordinary decomposition. If not, just imagine the foul odour! Zounds!

Tell us more about this exciting discovery. I know I will look, with great excitement and anticipaton, for a mummified cat, or small dog, or some other sort of beast, every time we tear down a wall for the remainder of my career.

Well done!

B.P. Mills - Sacramento, CA (USA)

What a gross idiot this person is. Dead cat in the wall. Mummies -- an absolute insult to the natural process of nature's recycling of materials. Superstitions causing such bizarre practices.

Reading this was like running into a goodly chunk of what is wrong with people all at once.

*I* thought "charm" was what employed when serving tea and speaking politely and kindly without pouring said tea down your guest's blouse.

Apparently, it's not for this maroon. It's a dead cat in the wall. Go figure. "Charming."