Deborah Lipp

My cat Watusi has been missing for ten days. It’s taken me this long to be able to write, or indeed talk, about it. She’s been spotted a few times in the complex, but I haven’t seen her and the neighbors haven’t been able to get near her. So I’m hopeful that she’ll return. But meanwhile I’ve been on a rollercoaster of guilt, grief, fear, love, and a kind of longing.

Longing. I can feel her absence everywhere. Feel the emptiness in my lap, hear the silence in the bathroom (because no one is hovering near the shower and whining), feel how the temperature of the bed is lower with no one sleeping on my feet.

In Witchcraft, we’re very concerned with the imaginative task. We use visualization as our stock in trade. Sometimes this is tricky. Suppose I’m doing a spell to get Peewee a new job. How do I visualize that? Do I picture Peewee commuting to his desired location, dressed in work drag? Do I picture Peewee receiving, or cashing, a paycheck? Do I imagine a stereotypical Boss Guy shaking hands with Peewee and saying “Welcome aboard!”? Do I question why I have a friend named Peewee in the first place?

All but the last are the sort of thing often visualized in spells. They require a vivid imagination and an ability to focus on a scenario and make it real. We use meditation to build the ability to silence distraction and improve focus. We practice with guided meditations and learn to build a library of mental imagery that will stand us in good stead. We work in groups so that our disparate mental images overlap and reinforce one another (and we communicate extensively so that they don’t contradict one another).

Visualization has never come easily to me. I have no sense of dimensionality. I am left/right impaired and I get lost in parking lots. I can’t visualize the rotation of an object and I have never solved a Rubik’s cube. I have used every trick of the Witch’s trade to make it work. Sometimes my mind is stuck in the abstract. I manipulate the abstract to work my will. For example, I might just see the word JOB in big, bold letters in my mind’s eye, rather than (or in addition to) anything more cinematic.

With Watusi, there has been no problem. My relationship with her is tactile, physical, and present. There’s no abstraction in loving a cat. When I close my eyes, I can feel her, see her, experience her. I am holding her, she is heavy. She is kissing me on the lips (crazy girl), her left eye is running (again). She is meowing and I hear it exactly, in all its nuance of intonation that distinguishes between Good morning and I’m really goddamn thirsty. In a word, she’s real.

All I want is my girl back. But in the meantime, the experience is teaching me something about Witchcraft, and something about keeping it real.