First, I was a witch, alone
in my basement apartment, lighting candles, burning sage, sprinkling powders,
making potions to spread along doorways, and casting spells. Enchanted words
whispered soft enough to keep secret but loud enough to release the spirits to
do my bidding, which, for me, was about boys and my size 14 waistline, which I
would prefer to be about a 10.
However,
being a witch isn’t all bedknobs and broomsticks; in fact, there is almost no
flying beds. It mostly involves bathing in walnuts and pine cones, then taking
that bath water to the closest intersection and throwing it away, completely
naked.
But
in those days, the most naked I could be, half a block from the corner of
Delaware and Hallam, was braless and shoeless. I don’t know if you have ever
walked barefoot at midnight under a full moon, balancing your own bath water in
a bucket with a faulty handle, but a bra and shoes are the most effective tools
for a witchy endeavour such as this.
I
never really wanted to be a witch; I got caught up in all the Pagan pomp and
circumstance, and there was a really cool girl in my improv class who called
herself a High Priestess. I was well into my 30s until I realized I just wanted
crystals, house plants, a garden with an estranged door in the middle of it and
whatever number of cats makes average men wrinkle their noses, in a bad way.
The
trajectory from witch to cat lady is easy; it’s a path of very little
resistance once you know which way you are sliding, it spins out around
availability. Dogs are too needy, so I was never going to be a dog lady. I
wasn’t old enough to be a bird lady and not young enough to be into hamsters.
I
could have been a pig lady, but in all fairness, my access to pigs was very
limited, especially in my 30s. I had a very lurking landlord and an upstairs
neighbour who rode a unicycle … everywhere … by choice. Plus, I didn’t need an
animal who was more stubborn than I was, but at the same time more emotionally
available. The choice was practically made for me. It would be cats.
Being
a cat lady is very much all-encompassing. There are days when you wonder, am I
a lady who loves cats or is the cat lady who I am? Over time, the veil becomes
razor thin, not because you have eight cat shirts in rotation, two of them
“taco cat,” which you wear proudly and unironically, almost always have cat
hair on your clothes or, worse, in your nose, and have not once but twice
mistakenly drunk cat urine.
It
is because, at any given moment when you meet a kindred within three minutes,
you both have your phones out, showing each other 5 to 95 pictures of your cat
in different shades of sun, but mostly because you, through no fault of your
own, start recruiting normal women into cat ladies.
Like
my friend Samantha. Sam was twenty years younger than me and wasn’t necessarily
a friend at first, but she was a client who came so often for Reiki treatments
that she became one. After a while, it was impossible to keep our souls apart.
Within
six months of my knowing Sam, she had two cats, and I am not saying I am
responsible, but she did call me one night to discuss the possibility of
getting a kitten, and at the end of the phone call, she had two kittens and a
new, long-lasting pejorative term that men would slur towards her when she told
them she wasn’t interested.
Reiki
brought us together, our love of cats tied our bonds, and for a period of time,
we walked a path of shared obsessions. Crystals, cleanses, celery juice, long
concrete-jungle walks, in Toronto, where we discussed spirit guides, and
essential oils. Samantha was my shadow; whatever I loved, she followed. I
showed her the Kool-Aid, and she willingly drank.
It
was nice to have a buddy who was equally obsessed with the accoutrements of a
healing world. We each had every single essential oil you could buy, all the
Medical Medium books, we knew when all the crystal shows were touring, and had
a growing obsession with salt lamps, especially since we found out that Winner
had different-shaped ones.
“I
heard they have a cat salt lamp,” she said, face down on my table.
“A
freaking what? An actual cat? Are you kidding me? I need this in my life.” The
tone in my voice was only amplified by the Reiki, which used my body as a
conduit. How could I possibly be a cat lady with no cat salt lamp? This seems
like something that needed to be fixed immediately.
“I
know. Me too, I need this in my life.” She matched my energy.
“Then
we will have cat salt lamps, Samantha … what’s your last name?”
“McLeallan.”
“Then
we will have cat salt lamps, Samantha McLeallan.” The declaration was made.
Even though I no longer identify as a witch, the spell was cast, and the
spirits sent out to do our bidding, which would not be easy, because we would
both need one.
We
decided I’d borrow my mother’s car and we would travel to every single Winners
and HomeSense in the Greater Toronto Area in a single weekend until we tracked
down the cat salt lamps, and who knows what other interesting shapes.
For
us, it did not matter how many actual plugs we had in each of our own
apartments, each no bigger than 600 Square feet; we were on a mission, and not
unlike Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael what’s his face, it was going to
be epic.
At first glance, it didn’t look like our inaugural stop at Leeside, and Laird would produce any salt lamps with any shape. I mean, we were not settling for regular hunks of rocks; we were looking for shapes, hearts, bricks, globes, a leaf, a teardrop, the cube; we were beyond a shapeless lump of salt. So I went off to grab some snacks, six bags of different lentil chips, each one worse than the next.
As
I made my way up to the cash, I heard in a deep, familiar whisper, ““Boomer,”
she was crouched down, half-hidden, and opening a box in between her leg.
““Samantha,
what are you doing?” I knew exactly what she was doing; she had found a broken
box, poorly wrapped with packing tape, and she was opening it back up. “What
are you doing?” I asked again to fill the space between her getting caught and
us finding out what was in the box. Which would come first, only seconds would
tell.
Her
face morphed from consternation to a joy that could fuel a light bulb,
accompanied by a low-pitched squeal that, I think, in the 1800’s, did fuel
lightbulbs. By the neck, she pulled out the elusive cat salt lamp. We were both
in shock and dismay, and it felt a little bit like we were in The Lion King
at the edge of a cliff.
“OMG,
Samantha, how did you know?” The bags and bags of chips I cradled in my arms
kept me from reaching out to touch the cat.
“You
take it.” She launched it towards me.
“No
Way! You found it. You illegally opened that box You had the knowing it was
there.” I crushed the salt snacks against my chest to contain my ugly envy. I
didn’t want her to see it and ruin this moment. “How did you know?” I asked in
a more rational tone.
“I
just did. I don’t know, I just did.” She was still hunched over the box.
“Then it’s yours, babe. There will be more; this is only our first store, and the first box? What are the chances? There will be so many more!”
There was not. We filled that hatchback with salt lamps for two full weekends and a Wednesday evening, neither of us saying no to a single new shape. We giggled and rolled our eyes at ourselves as we filled my mother’s red Honda Fit with heavy salt lamps. Two crazy cat ladies, on the road, searching for a collection of things that the rest of the world would never understand.
Despite
the fact that she had found hers right out of the gate, she never wavered in
her commitment to find mine. “We will find it,” she said. “We just need some
magic.” When she said it, you believed her.
We
were big and outrageous together, kindred spirits whose passions were ginormous
but honest. We laughed, sat in traffic way too long and sang “That’s What
Friends Are For!” eight times at the top of our lungs on the Garner Expressway,
with the windows rolled up, because she had never heard it before, which was
the only disgusting thing about her.
Three
months later, moving into the cold, dampness of late fall, that part of fall
that might as well be winter, Samantha had left my house after a Reiki
treatment: “I think I will walk home before it snows.”
Thirty
minutes later, she called me, not long enough for her to be at Pape yet. I
could only hear a squeal, one that could light a light bulb in the 1800’s.
““I
found it.”
On
her way home, she’s stopped in at Winners at Bay and Bloor.
““Now,
Boomer, it has a broken ear, but we like that. I think it’s fitting, ‘cause we
like stray cats.”
“Oh
my god, Sam, you just went on a whim? For me? How did you know?”
““I
just did. I don’t know, I just did. You want it right?” She did not wait for my
response. “I’m getting it!”
I
think Samantha was happier than me that day, but that was her enchantment.
Neither of us considered ourselves witches, just crazy cat ladies whose ability
to understand each other was magical.
***
Natasha Boomer is a Bohemian. A wanderer, collector and teller of stories, writer of eight one-woman shows and four plays, lover of animals, server of tables, walker of miles and miles a day, teacher of improv and chakras, master of Reiki, eater of vegan cuisine, driver of a 2010 red Honda Fit, speaker to most strangers in all grocery store lines, propagator of plants, maker of gardens, and a prominent laminator of anything and everything. Life is good, life is hard, and in between are our stories.
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