Catnip

A poem
by Laura Stamps

Before dawn the owl’s pulsing
cry tats a June morning with
its haunting tune. At least
fifteen minutes of boisterous
hooting. Now silence, and she
wonders where its great marbled
wings are carrying it, slicing
like a chef’s knife through
the humid darkness of the sky.

That uneasy day on Santee Avenue
twenty years ago stands in Ravena’s
mind as a beginning. It happened
just before colonies of faeries,
angels, and elementals entered her
life. Before she heard the soft call
of the Goddess, a sweet whispering,
yet a sound attracting her with such
magnetism that she could not resist.
And why would she? Never had she
felt so loved, completely comfortable
with what the Divine Feminine and
Wicca offered. Her soul had finally
found its home in a new life as a
solitary practitioner. A white witch.

After Ravena graduated from college
in 1980, she created Catnip Enchant-
ments, a one-woman business
manufacturing and marketing catnip
toys for cats. She grows organic
catnip in her garden, dries it in the
kitchen, and stuffs it into mice sewn
from unbleached muslin, decorated
with nontoxic vegetable dyes. Each
toy is then charged with a good fortune
spell to bless the cats of her customers
with long and healthy lives. She
sells her catnip toys through ads in
newsstand magazines, her web site,
and cat and craft shows across South
Carolina. Last year she added a line
of sundresses for cats. The idea
ballooned in her mind when one of
her three calico cats began to over-
groom. By the time Ravena narrowed
the allergens down to the grains and
chicken in the food, the cat had licked
half the hair from her body. While
purchasing a grain-free/chicken-free
dry food at Wet Nose Oasis, a specialty
pet food store, she saw a selection
of ruffled sundresses for small dogs
and thought this could be the perfect
solution for her hairless cat, one that
might discourage further licking by
covering most of the bald areas. After
three months on the new food, wearing
the sundress every day, and generous
applications of bitter goldenseal tea
to the bald spots, the cat’s coat had
completely grown back, and Ravena
knew she must design a pretty sun-
dress with ruffles and bows just for
cats. When she added the sundress
to her product line, it became an
immediate success and blessed many
of her customers distressed by cats
that overgroom in response to allergens
in food, litter, and the environment.
Catnip Enchantments may be small,
but it thrives as a profitable business,
one that grants her plenty of time for
hobbies like reading, flower gardening,
feral cat rescue, and spellcrafting.

Before she could see the light
she could hear it, tapping its cane
behind the old pine. When dawn
smokes the earth, before birds
whisper their blue and black and
brown secrets, before her husband
could grumble from their bed,
Ravena stands in apricot light, tiny
blades of grass rising between her
toes. She thinks this would be the
perfect time to dance. To whirl
in her nightgown and reach for the
cords she knows dangle from the
stars clinging to the morning sky.
To let the wind caress her body with
its soft fur. But then the mocking-
bird begins to play its crystal flute,
and the moment passes. "Next
time," she says to the sunlight rolling
through the field, dusting the trees,
singing its simple song to the grass.

Third week of June, and Ravena
leans against the sink, rinsing plates,
watching the stain from last night’s
dinner swirl its dark boat down the
drain. Through the window the peri-
winkle seed she planted in April
arches toward the sun, littering the
walkway with red and white and
pink umbrellas. Her tiniest cat sits
in a pot of daisies, still as a stone,
waiting for the bright green lizards
that cannot resist the sun’s sweet
touch. Lately Ravena dreams about
the old pine in the backyard. In her
dreams she slithers up the rough
crust of the tree like a snake,
stopping to spread her body along
a wide branch. High in the tree
she can hear only her breath and
the wind as it cups the needles
of the tree, roaring with the sharp
laughter of pine. Some mornings
she’ll stop and watch the tree
framed in the window, its willowy
branches waving in the same way
her long flaxen hair sways when
she walks. Silence appears as her
new companion, curling in her lap,
its paws crossed upon her knee.
Every day another word or phrase
fades from Ravena’s lips. Strangely,
she no longer feels any need to
explain, as she watches her husband
fret from worry to worry without
the dark wing of a comment rustling
through her mind. She thinks she
might be waiting for something,
but for what she does not know.
There is another dream. This one
she dreams while awake, watching
herself sitting in an open field, every
object around her swimming in the
color of dust. But she’s not afraid.
For some reason this place of dust
and emptiness and wind, where the
air warms and shimmers with flecks
of gold comforts her. In November
the pine sheds its needles but
seems to keep more than it releases.
Crows gather in its branches,
calling to the earth like dark, glossy
signs of prosperity and good magic.

Dawn rolls its scarlet bone across
the sky, while Ravena stands behind
the old pine, lifting her arms to
press her palms toward the cool
marble of the clouds. She thinks
this would be the perfect time to
dance like she danced in high school,
those times when she felt as light
and fluid as a summer butterfly.
Silence rests its bag of leaves in
a plastic chair on the deck, while
her body slowly remembers one
step and then another, moving in
a clockwise direction in the same
way she circles three times every
morning when casting a spell
of protection, a necessity when
walking in a world wired for stress:

Dear Goddesses, Elementals,
Angels, and Faeries: Around
and round this circle is cast,
to surround me while treading
pavement, ground, and
grass. Walk with me every
minute of this day. Protect
me from any negative energy
coming my way. Now the
circle is cast. So mote it be.

She smiles, realizing at last what
she’s been waiting for, and the
wind turns with her as she whirls
beneath the pine. Before she could
feel the light, she could taste it:
sweet, tangy, unavoidably wild.

from White Witch: A Novel in Verse, Kittyfeather Press, 2006

Copyright 2006 by Laura Stamps