My brother told me this when I was a brat. When he was a teenager,in 1966, living in the North of Ireland, him and my older brother used to hitch from Belfast down to the Republic of Ireland. They used to stop at small houses and ask for directions. Anyway, it was G-'s turn to ask for directions so he went up a driveway and found himself in a courtyard completed with a barn but the strangest thing was that the court yard was filled with cats. Thousands upon thousands of the moogies all meowing. G- thought it was weird so he went to the main house, which was half timber/half stone and knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. So, after a few minutes of literally thumping on the door and cats rubbing themselves aginst his legs, he decided to peer through the window.
Inside he saw fifty to sixty cats all sitting around a hole looking down then they all turned and looked up at him. G- said he never ran so damned fast in his life, screaming for my other brother to come and have a look but he was too was running as if the devil was chasing them. A few days later, G- was called by my grannie at her home. She asked him to repeat the above story, which he did, and she told him that the house was the infamous vanishing house of whispering willows...it only appears every 50 years...