Purrranormal Romance

How cute! How kitsch! Yes to both LOL. And as you all know, I’m a Crazy Cat Lady. But it has a lot of truth for me and is part of my inspiration.

I first got to make friends with the cat spirit when I was about seven months old when Dad brought home our first kitten, a tiny black furry wriggle with green-blue eyes that looked straight into mine and recognised me. I can still remember the amazing shock-feel as I sat on the hearthrug in front of the open fire being observed and spoken to by the wriggly bindle of life in front of me. And I remember looking up at Dad, trying to tell him the kitten had told me his name.

Dad was a cyfarwydd – that’s a taleweaver in the old British tongue – so he was pretty good at understanding the toothless mumble of a small person who hasn’t got the hang of shaping her mouth and using her tongue to form words well yet! He told me later how he’d never forgot the moment as he had felt the recognition-shock too and he heard what I was trying to say as mindspeech in his head, that what I’d said was, ‘He’s Tweeniepuss, cos he comes from in between.’

Much later when I was a teenager Dad and I talked about my babyhood. One of the times was when I began a chat over breakfast, asking about talking with animals and Dad brought up the memory. I was always able to talk with animals, birds and trees, now I’d got to an age where I wanted to know more about the whys and wherefores of it. That’s when we had our first big discussion about Threads, being connected to them and learning how to work with them. I’ve been a conscious thread-weaver ever since.

A lifetime of experience has shown me everyone has this ability inside them, we could all weave the threads if we choose to, but for many that ability has been soundly squished out of us by parents and teachers who are all terrified of the talent having had their own well squished as wee kiddies. Who hasn’t had what pussychologists call “an imaginary friend”? And who hasn’t been told by some grownup, at some time, that we must stop making up stories and grow up, that those things are just for babies? Even I, surrounded by Old Folk, people who practice the old magical ways of their land, have met half-witted supposed-adults who effectively called me a liar! These were teachers and people who did not live in the village and were horribly normal. I was lucky in that I could go home and tell my folks about the nasty experience and know I’d be believed and helped to understand and defend myself against it. Big boundaries lessons!

So I got my first full-on lesson in thread-connection and weaving from our first kitten before I could even walk properly and maybe had just a single tooth. My teacher, my Arch Wizard, was a beautiful black cat! I guess you get some of why Purrranormal now 😊

For me, it always was/is purrranormal because of my first teacher, and because I’ve been fortunate enough to live with cats all my life. We’ve never bought a cat, they always come of their own accord, usually as rescues, because the ability to speak with them feel safe, and makes looking after them so easy. I know-in-my-bones I can ask them what’s wrong, what they need, and that I’ll understand what they tell me. In case you didn’t know, rescues always have complex PTSD. Of course they do, think about all the poor souls have gone through. Mindspeech is so very helpful for that.

I was just reading a fellow author’s book – Tricia O’Malley’s Wild Irish Eyes, its tag line is “Oh, to stop the voices in her head”. O’Malley does a grand job of showing just what squishing does to people. I enjoy her books, they’re pretty spicy so beware if you don’t like that, but she has a real handle on the old ways, hers are Irish and mine are British but we’re actually very close together. This book also shows just how useful mindspeech is. I wish everyone would have a go at learning it so humanity could get off this horrid, separatist kick it’s into that we’re different and better than all the creatures we share out planet with! Grrrr!

But to finish, the cats who come to live with me are always my familiar spirits too, right from Tweeniepuss way back then to my lovely Kellas now. They help with my writing, popping ideas in my head, expanding scenes, making good, sudden, interesting plot-twists, and angles in blogs. If – no when! – I get writer’s block I have a sit-with the cat and it gets sorted, I see where the story wants to go and how to do it. Consequently there has to be some “sit-with the cat time” every day or the story will stall and get stuck in the quagmire of my brain-fuzz.

Off to sit-with the cat and get some purrranormal wisdom … see you next week!

PS – I teach folk how to connect with the threads. If you’d like to learn go HERE 😊