The Cat Goddess

I have been serving my gods a long time. Well, not long in their history, but long for this life-cycle's anyway. I don't think I've written too much about what I am pressed to do, because a good portion of the time, I don't know what I'm being forced to do. All too often, the hands of my gods is a sort of nudge, feeling almost like a whim that you cannot deny. For the most part, they are amicable; There are no war-gods here.

The first god I was aware of was Bast. While I loved to study ancient societies, one summer, Egypt was what called to me. I was confused, because I had never had a draw to it. But at night, I began to have feverish dreams of lazing about, of watching scribes teach younger boys to write in clay with sticks, a language more pictures than letters. Texas was hot, but even in my dreams the sun bore down on me, incense of catnip and honey filling my senses. I was aware of her hunger, her instincts, and soon they began to leak out into my waking life. For a lifetime I had spoken to cats and had them speak back, but what was happening to me was nothing beyond amazing; My reflexes grew quickly enough to outpace my awareness of them, and I would often find myself holding something that had been thrown or tossed at me, having barely registered that it had been thrown.

Despite the pain, I often took to the trees. I loved to be in them, climbing sinuously around branches at a height that often left my younger friends crying, afraid something bad would happen. I only fell once, and no one was more surprised than I at how quickly I fell, and how much faster I reacted.

Suddenly I was on my toes on the ground, standing with a digitigrade stance that would never completely leave me. As I looked up to where I fell, I could remember how I moved, how my weaker left hand had reached to grab a branch just right, how my right foot hooked under the branch below me with the left foot above, so that in a controlled face-first fall, I could arch my back around to let my right arm grab the same, and fall the last five inches to the ground.

Later that summer, my dad and I went to the museum. This in itself wasn't unusual; I loved to learn, and my dad loved to let me. But this time, inside the familiar doors was the carefully (though not carefully enough) bleached smell of death. A mummy had come to Houston, though that wasn't what drew me.

The carved onyx face of a cat looked back at me from glass, gilded necklace and eyes ignoring the twelve thousand years that had passed between its birth and mine. The statue I first saw was small, not much bigger than the mummified cat that had been near it. But that didn't do anything to lessen its hold on me, and I begged for the purchase of a similar one in the gift shop. It was one of my many reasonable requests, and so my father deigned to grant it. But the green and black and gold statue was important, somehow, and having it helped me feel at peace. I no longer have the statue bought then, unfortunately. It fell to the hands of bullies equally willing to punish a foreign god as a weirdo. Bast has not left my life since then, but she still holds a great amount of sway; She is by far the best at calling out my fox.

To be continued...