As some folks already know, I am home from a week in the hospital. I have had a good start on my journey of healing and recovering thanks in no small part to the ministrations and prayers of members of the Order, Reflections students, colleagues, friends and family.
I have a long list of people to thank, which I will post soon enough.
But right now, I am just so grateful.
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Squeaky the Calico Goddess, my co-priestess and familiar, died yesterday in my arms as I sang “Weaver, Weaver”. She was 17 and a half years old.
I remember her as the runt of her litter, very small, very sick and very unhappy. Her brother, Stinky, was healthy, happy and well adjusted which by contrast had him dying eight years earlier. By all accounts, she was not supposed to be my cat. But something about her plight reminded me of myself, so she came home with me that summer.
I had to nurse her like she was a foundling and all her instincts seemed miss-wired somehow. I held her in my arms and sang to her as often as I could. Slowly over the next few years, she turned from a wild-eyed waif back into a cat. As I slowly took on the mantle of priestess and witch, she began sleeping under altars and showing up for trances. She cast our circles as we planned, and grounded us when we were scattered. Dark Flame began speaking of the temple cats, and Squeaky was our feline priestess.
But she wasn’t only a magickal cat, she was also a mischievous one. Almost every person who slept here as part of the Anti-Globalization movement had stories about her. She snatched one of Starhawk’s socks, made love to it under the sofa and then peed on her bag. She use to gesticulate wildly on any leather items including boots, purses and apparel – whether you were wearing the item or not! I joked nervously at the time that she had apparently picked up on one of my fetishes. She liked her hot red harness so much she would roll around on the floor purring loudly whenever I put it on her. So she had a BDSM side, who doesn’t? ;-)
But the funniest stories included her apparent herding of guests who she felt had over stayed their welcome. She would march up to each of them stare them in the face, look toward the door and back to them. The message was clear, “There’s the door!”
On at least one occasion, she sat with her back to me and mimicked my talking as if to say, “Shut up already!” And on any given night, there she was demonstrating to me how to climb the stairs to go to bed, “You see, *this* is how it is done!” I use to explain that I knew I was in trouble when she started speaking slowly and enunciating. And she was definitely the only cat I knew who could cuss like a sailor, a British sailor in fact.
Squeaky earned the co-priestess title by sitting with people who were in distress. If one of my students began crying she would immediately go sit by them. In fact, I often watched her for clues as to when I needed to up the level of my tending. She would let them rub her head, or she would rub up against them. Once she even jumped onto the sofa and sat in a person’s lap just in time to bring them back from the edge.
She always sat with me when I cried. She was there for me when my brothers died. She was there with me for my descents into the underworld and watched over me through my many seemingly endless dark nights. The only time we parted ways was when I rescued the black kittens. I would like to think that at the end, she forgave me even for that.
I will miss her. Even now as I sit crying, I can feel her sitting between my feet. Last night I dreamt of bluebirds and awoke to hear two cats playing in the tub. I caught a glimpse of her briefly as I stepped into the bathroom. Devi looked surprised but delighted. He has been searching for her all morning, stopping to gaze at me with the biggest eyes. “She is gone,” I say through tears. And outside I hear the chirping of birds.
May the Bluebird of Happiness bless us all.
In love, may she return again …
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I am learning a lot about the state of my health as I travel this journey. One thing I had not realized till recently is how much fatigue plays a role in my life. I blamed so much on the pain, that I had not realized how tired I was overall. But this past few weeks had me, just as I was recovering from my trip, plunging headfirst into a rite of passage only to find my self back at alarming fatigue again.
So now I get it, my pain does not cause my fatigue. It is a separate symptom altogether. Which makes sense in a way, but I had long forgotten my early experiences with this illness. In the early days, pain was one of the early indications of a flare up. It was followed by a fever then the fog and fatigue would kick in within days. It was always a struggle to gather enough food and supplies before the fog descended.
Nowadays, the fog and fatigue is nowhere as severe, but I still need to account for it in my plans. My November is in a word, crazy! So I will need to budget my time and energy, along with asking for help when I need it.
This past Monday, two of my students came over and cleaned up my kitchen for me as I sat mumbling to myself on the sofa. I am so grateful for the help I receive. I just have to get better at asking for help and accepting it when it is offered.
So this latest med is helping a lot with the pain, it is down to a 2 or 3 on the pain scale. I am sleeping better and when I take it easy, I can actually enjoy my life as a pain free person.
It is amazing how much I had identified with my illness. But now I can discover a new me along this continuing journey.
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And a quick off topic Shout Out: My students bought me a copy of Jung’s Red Book! I am so overwhelmed by their generosity. I cried when I opened the box, and I still sit and stare at it from across the room. I do not want this moment to pass too quickly.
Thanks Guys, You All Totally Rock!!!
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Devi as Bast
Well, for a hot minute I thought I had my first transgendered cat, but alas no ... Devi is now officially a boy.
What with the vet and all the techs scratching their collective heads, no one was sure what Devi was gender-wise. I chuckled to myself thinking of all those gender bending aspects of the Hindi gods.
But finally the vet lifted s/he up and declared, "Uh, no ... that there is a penis!" It was very funny and troubling all at once. It seems most of Devi's equipment is still tucked up in his abdomen and .. on top of it all ... is very very small.
I will pause for the irony to affect those closest to me .... and send them to the bathroom ... better now? Okay, now back to our story.
Devi, however, was no shirker in giving the vet a run for his money .. ur, I mean MY money. Between the Calico Diety and the aforementioned drag queen, Devi Bast, not one but two techs had to be called in to give them their meds.
I feel a lot less incompetent now. If it was hard for them, I am none to shabby having to deal with them on my own.
I forget sometimes how this illness can make a person feel feeble.
So shots all around, a good ear cleaning for the s/he devil and off we go to get mama a donut.
I decided I deserved something for all the tussling I endure just getting them both into the car.
Then an uneventful drive home. This is good considering the black helicopters hovering overhead with sirens blaring all over Maryland's campus as I drove past on the way to the vet.
A quiet sip of tea, a favorite incense and some quiet music ... ahh!
blessings to you all,
K
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".