a cat by any other name...

After the break-up of my twenty year marriage, my friend Fern moved in with my son and I. We live in a large Victorian, full of spirits and odd happenings. Fern will be moving out in July, but for the past five years, she has added her own special something to the potent mix on York Street. Fern has a fascination with offbeat methods of healing, and is a real sucker for self-help systems. When she moved in, Byron Katie’s four questions were relentlessly invoked. (The four questions are; Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without the thought?) One of the things I like the best about Reclaiming's principles of unity is the invocation of the questioning attitude, but damn, did my attitude suck in regards to those blasted questions! I was deeply relieved when this gave way to some method of tapping yourself when you have upsetting thoughts. Given she was going thru a bad break-up, Fern ended up tapping herself black and blue, and this gave way to something else.

Given that I see life as a dream, ripe with metaphor and meaning and spell work as just a way of working with the dream, we’ve been pretty good companions. My witchery doesn’t involve casting circles as much as cleaning the house or cooking dinner with intent. So, coming home to corn meal on the front stoop I might not exactly understand, but I trust is in the spirit of moving things along in a positive way. The self-help stuff always has made my eyes roll, but Fern is also a kick ass professional astrologer, and what house can’t use one of those? She’s also dispensed advice on what flower essence would be best for just about any feeling under the sun, and I took her advice on painting a drain pipe gold in the money corner of the house when she was going thru a Feng shui phase. Her strong belief that a light bulb embedded in a chunk of salt would change the energy of the house ended up with my ex and I ordering one on Ebay. It turned out to be bigger than my head, and reminds me of the salt licks we put out for the sheep and cattle when I was a kid.

Fern has been plagued by chronic pain from endrometritus, and it must be said that she certainly has tried everything…and I mean everything, to heal it. She’s eaten something called “kitcheree” now for months, and has been on every kind of healing diet you can imagine. Tragically, none involve anything fun or tasty, like chocolate, wine, or caffeine. At one point, I had to put my foot down and demand that the house be a free zone from discussing the merits of colonics. Some shit should literally not be talked about. I've been waiting for the day I find a jar of leeches in the kitchen and we have to argue over the merit of them healing wise. Fern enthusiastically engages in healing others as well, including the pets. Gus, the narcissistic hound dog, has seen psychics and gone for cranial sacral treatments. Every healer has had the same basic information. Gus is basically fine, but he would like her to wear more fuzzy sweaters.

While I was in Britain, she turned her attention to my son’s cat. Casey got him as kitten at the same time as our family was breaking up. He named him “Saturn”. Saturn has been a skittish, very anxious, skinny little cat, almost autistic in regards to relating. Our other cat, who Casey named “Tickles”, is just like his name, a big, easy-going, clown of a cat. Fern, being an astrologer, felt that my son was reacting to the Saturnian changes in his life, Saturn being a planet that symbolizes difficulty and constriction. Casey had unconsciously named his experience in the naming of his pet. Being given such a name, the little kitten had taken on some of the pain and anxiety due to the break-up. Of course he was a nervous wreck! She decided to experiment by calling him a name associated with expansiveness and joy. While I was gone, she began calling him Jupiter, and slipped him some flower essences. I suspect there might have been some Reiki aimed in his direction as well.

On my return, the cat formerly known as Saturn, had fattened up. He honestly had put on more weight! Besides the weight gain, his coat looked shinier, and most amazingly of all, he now will jump into various laps and actually cuddle up and relax. I’ve taken to call him “Joop Joop” and he does seem to like it. So funny, after all these years of various treatments and healing regimes, the one instantly effective came down to changing a name. Is it true? Do I absolutely know it’s true? And most important question of all; Is it funny? Yes, indeed! Even if it wasn't true, it should be, just for the sheer delight of it. There’s power in names. They are indeed, a kind of magic. Who knew it could really be this simple?