Pagan Blog Project - F

F is for Familiar.

A familiar is a magickal helper most often associated with witches.  A familiar can be any animal, whether they be an animal spirit or an actual live animal depends entirely on the individual.  Until I got the cats that we have now I never actual had a familiar.  I had tried for a long time to meditate upon this and to work with guides and such to discover what my familiar would be, but always to no avail.
We had an old cat, a tabby called Tiggy, who died in 2006 and after that we got 3 kittens from an animal refuge.  One in particular has always been close to me and my husband - a semi-short haired cross tabby.  Tinkerbelle.  She is very fluffy and we hand reared her from 6 weeks old.  I thought she was going to be my familiar, but she's only ever really curious about what I'm up to.
The following year we had an awful incident with our black tom, he was deliberately ran over by our then neighbours.  We got another tom soon after - the tom was our son's cat and he wanted another cat pretty much straight away.
This is when we got our tom, Rocky.  It took him about a week to settle in but after that he made a beeline for my bed.  It was then that I noticed he would appear beside me whenever I was doing anything remotely witchy.  If he was outside he would come home.  If he was not in the same room as me he would just suddenly come in.  It became apparent that he is my familiar.  He sits beside me when I am doing any divination work.  He just has to be in the room with me if I am spelling.  He even does the same to my daughters whenever they are doing anything of a magickal nature.  He really dislikes men, except my husband and son, much preferring women and he cannot bear to be in the same room as any male visitor to the house.
Both he and Tinkerbelle have that psychic bond with me and my daughters too.



This is Tinkerbelle, doing what she does best - getting herself into strange places.




This is Rocky, he had been following me all over the garden just before this had been taken.




And this is Bubble, Queen of the house and Lady of the sofa.  She is very Royal and if you touch her and you're not a man she will complain loudly and spend the next hour washing herself in disgust.