Here is the fierce predator Onion in her natural environment. She’s stalked and killed a roll of toilet paper, having started the morning by taking down a votive candle.
I’m sad to tell you Onion is an only child now. Her sister Potato was lost a while ago on a grand adventure, begun by popping out a window screen. Potato started her quest at night, or I might have stopped it. She’s now with Bast, or wherever cats go when they take off. I miss her.
My first editor is a demanding one. But I’ve been writing! I’m nearly done with a draft of the third book!
It’s been a quiet last week here at the homestead. Here are Onion and Potato demonstrating cat chillery. I camped out an evening for the Fourth, but returned to the cats the next afternoon.
The final proofread version of The Deer Stalker is with the publisher, and layout for book should be done shortly. I’ll have a publishing date soon! The book will come out around the first of August: Lughnasadh.
After my morning witch-practice, I often leave my deity and ancestor candles burning a while for connection and in their honor.
This morning, after I was done, Potato decided to sit with my ancestors and deities too. If Cat-Mom does it every morning, maybe it’s useful for cats…?
So glad Mercury is going direct! It’s been a hard one, this Pisces retrograde. For me, it came as the return of old sorrows—old relationships snuffed out, things that will never be mended.
But luckily, it turns out, at least I won’t have to bother myself with writing any more. Potato has taken over the author’s chair.
Here is Potato with the latest New Yorker, giving her opinion of the literary establishment. Unlike me, she and her sister consume magazines starting at the corners, leaving frilled and bitten edges like lettuce.
I incorporated my beta readers’ comments into book two. This has been a hard last bit. Snow stayed, hard-crusted on the ground—we still have icebergs of it dotted across my backyard. Winter also stayed, with short days, and Daylight Savings was just an insult. I am prone to seasonal affective depression, but usually not so bad as this year.
Two members of the coven attempted to do fire magic last night. Potato stayed to take part in the coven meeting, but she fell asleep. These cat witches.
I’m going to a big witch retreat today! (Also with polytheists, pagans, and magicians. All the magical folks.) I’m helping put it on. We’ll be dreaming and working and imagining big magic, hoping to move toward the healed world.
It’ll be a build-your-own-spell ritual, and one altar will hold tools and symbols for altar and shrine building. I’m collecting a bunch of symbolic objects for folks to choose from.
Apparently one of those is a cat.
Tonight is the night of the new moon, time of Hekate’s deipnon.
Do you know how important the ring finger on your left hand is, if you’re right-handed?
Or, to take another tack: Have you ever looked up cat-bite infections on the internet?
I love my Miss Onion-cat, and I have to say she is a hothead and an extremist. I heard her having a fight Saturday morning. I thought she might have caught a rat.
She had caught that deadly creature Crateribus plasticus, the plastic crate. Her claw was hooked into one, and she couldn’t get it out. She was growling and hissing.