Spiritual Animals

Non Fiction

Ancient Egyptians worshiped cats. My first ever memory is being in my parents kitchen. At five years old, for me this space was still just a room full of cabinets and weird sharp instruments. My understanding at this point was that the food we consumed appeared out of these cupboards by magic. We actually had a magician over one time for the twin’s birthday party once, he tried to juggle fire in our back garden and burnt the patio set. Anyway, so our family had these two cats. They were called Scrumpy and Tabby-toes. Don’t ask me why. It was my father who named them. He died of heart failure in 2006. That seems a long time ago.

I like cats as pets. How they need less attention than dogs. They live their own independent existence and get on with it. I wish I knew more people who were like that. Eventually our two house pets got too old and they had to be put down. My mother was unsure of how to tell me the bad news and discussed with my father all manner of cliché platitudes like “They went to a better place” “The cats went on holiday together” etc. In the end my parents settled on the straightforward “Well the cats got too old and had to be put to sleep.” (Which required less questioning from my young self). To which I replied in a dead pan “Well that’s the end of that then.” This was my first experience with the concept of death after all.

My grandmother on my father’s side of the family believed in reincarnation. She also told me she was a witch. My father and I would help her get her groceries. Which wasn’t much of a hassle on top of our family’s weekly shopping as all she ever seemed to buy was milk and several packets of Royals cigarettes. When grandmother told me that she would die and be reborn as a money spider, I asked her “Why a money spider?” to which she answered “So I can spy on you.”