Most of us know the ‘vibrating heating pad’ whose ‘ON’ button is either beneath its chin or behind its ear, but no batteries are ever required.

          Most female feline companions do recall a cat or two, who didn’t normally indulge in actual LapTime, suddenly getting the urge JUST about the time we had menstrual cramps.

         The relief to be had here depended on the WEIGHT of said cat. The one in the long procession of cats who took it upon himself to be my Minister of Menstrual Mayhem, Poozik, had a habit of deciding that my outstretched legs (be they on the floor or stretched towards a footstool) were his personal hammock. He would clamber up, put his back feet against my stomach, lie on his back, stretch his paws OVER his head and fall dead asleep. His paws touched my feet!

 THIS you don’t want LANDING on you, even in FlorenceMode, when you have cramps. But he meant well.

         If, as comedian Rich Hall believed, all cats have sound-tracks going on in their heads, Poozik’s was circus-music. If I offered him a steak or a bran muffin, he’d go for the bran muffin, purring as he scarfed it down. Anything remotely resembling a muffin had to be securely hidden at all times.

         Poozik didn’t do change well. I left him with a friend while I spent my 6 weeks up at Susun Weed’s for my apprenticeship. This friend didn’t let on until I returned that she never saw anything but the tip of his tail for the entire six weeks as he disappeared into the labyrinth of basement pipes. Her pottery studio was down there, but she never saw him, and she couldn’t let him upstairs as her husband was asthmatically allergic. Her willingness to take him saved me from putting him in a shelter.

         When I did return, I was horrified that a cuddle-monger like Poozik hadn’t been TOUCHED in six weeks. Cautiously I crept into her basement, calling him softly. IMMEDIATELY (and I swear I heard faint circus music) I heard his “Mom? Mom? Mom? MOM!? MOM!!?” as he scrambled down out of the rafters and DOVE into my arms. With his purring I heard his entire hard drive erase and the last six weeks never happened.

This was one of my Lyme-induced homeless chapters and I had to leave him with yet another friend while I took a house-sitting job. He was fine there, went in and out a hundred times a day, but one day my friend had her sister house-sitting for HER. Poozik saw an unfamiliar face when he went to go in and zing – the hard-drive wiped itself out again, and he never again set foot in the house. We suspect he went off to become the mayor of Peekskill.

        For the next bunch of years I convinced myself that NOT buying cat food and NOT dealing with litterboxes was fine by me. I had plenty of feline companionship as, since my homeless/Lyme chapters tended to be CleaningLady chapters, I was vacuuming up everyone else’s cat hair on a weekly basis.

         One of my cleaning clients was readying to move away and asked if I wanted one of her many cats. I took Wheatena home with me to see how we’d do, gave her a sock full of catnip to play with, she leaped up into my lap to be silly and be petted, when suddenly it seemed as though someone hit the eject button on her fur. I had fur on my face and in my mouth and in my eyes, yeccch. Dumping her on the floor, I went to wash my hands and face in the kitchen. My nose and throat were itchy, so I figured I just overloaded on fur and took some Lovage Root tincture. While I was waiting for that to kick in, I realized I could see my cheeks……from up here. UH-OH, my face is swelling. I ran for the Osha Root Tincture and took a whole dropperful and proceeded to panic. I was alone on a 10 acre farm. Not good. I took a dropperful of Motherwort to try to calm down, as I was beginning to look like a cabbage patch kid. My nose was so swollen inside I could barely swallow.

         Long story short, I finally got the girlfriend of the friend of the neighbor to FINALLY take me to a Doc In A Box (walk-in clinic) where THIS doc had NO idea what the HELL he was looking at. My face said total anaphylactic reaction, but it STOPPED right at the top of my throat (yay Osha!!). He didn’t need to give me epinephrine, but did give me a shot of Benadryl which took down the facial swelling for awhile.

Back to the farm I went, packed up Wheatena and brought her BACK to my client with a ‘sorry, not gonna work’ note. And THAT began a 5-year deadly allergy to cats. Osha kept me out of the emergency rooms, but there were MANY episodes of having trouble breathing because kitteh walked into the room. Over the years it began to extend to other animals as well and I was getting pretty miserable.

Not COMPLETELY believing that the hypnotherapy that I was certifying in at the time was REALLY capable of ending such a severe allergy, I was still willing to commit to five sessions over a year’s time, as I trusted my teacher Paul Aurand.

The initial session, where we explored the source of this, was one of the most mind-blowing experiences I have ever had, and is a story for a whole ‘nother time. From there, we set about to re-train my body to have a different response to the presence of cat. Fortunately I had years of strong sense-memories of being blissfully ok with my cats.

The black velvet circle on the cushion right next to me as I write this, with her paws over her face sound asleep, tells us….it WORKED.

          During the allergy years, I was lent one of those hairless cat-creatures, you know, the hypoallergenic ones who look like they were rolled in dryer lint? They’re rather oddly elegant in champagne-color or silky silver, but Boot would have been a tabby if she’d had any actual fur. Very strange-looking creature, but dear.

         THIS chapter had me facing what they call in dental circles ‘a hot nerve’ – a new filling gone WAY bad, that no amount of Novocain could touch. We were waiting for penicillin to take care of it which, of course, wasn’t going to happen, as penicillin doesn’t fix damaged, howling, shrieking nerves. Who knew.

I’m lying in bed in proper fetal position, ROCKING myself and literally moaning in pain. THIS cat hops up on the bed, which she often did, but before I could shove her away, she began to very systematically lick exactly the JAW in question. I lay there with major question marks coming out of my head. She went from ear to chin and back again and then lined every one of her paws (yes, backs and fronts) along my jaw and went to sleep.

?

To say I wanted to shout to the world that the pain was gone the next morning is putting it mildly.

 It wasn’t.

But, like Poozik, she meant well.

         My present companion, the black velvet circle, doesn’t normally sleep with me. I don’t know why. She does, however, come in at first movement in the morning, and very, very gently pats my face to remind me to get up. If that doesn’t get a hand out from under the covers to pet her, she goes for my nose and if THAT doesn’t work, she goes for my mouth because that ALWAYS works.

“Stop that, those paws have been in the litter box, eeeewwwww!”

This is PC, PussCafe, a small black cat with a tiny face and a perfect white circle on her chest.

 The head of my bed is beneath the bedroom window and PC has gifted me with more than one session of Kitteh CPR when she’s been sitting on my chest and decides to launch off to the windowsill >CLEAR!<

She is also a reincarnated circus seal in that she’ll be sitting ON me when I’m in bed and as I turn over she ‘walks the ball’ without ever getting off. I’m lying on my side – she’s perched on my hip. I roll over to my back – she’s grinnin’ at me from her new spot directly on my bladder because THAT works too! Get UP, Mom!

But like I said, she DOESN’T sleep with me.

Yesterday, spurred on by an absolute motherlode of burdock roots, I did the motion I’ve been doing for TOO many decades, which is digging with a spading fork that I push on with my left foot, which twists my hip all out of line and usually puts me and my knees in really mean pain for an entire week after a haul like this.

Last night I fell asleep on my back, which I don’t often do, and half woke to an odd feeling. PC was laying on my KNEES. Now really, I’ve got plenty of nice, soft, squishy parts of me which make for good sleeping places, but my KNEES???? And she wouldn’t get off. She adjusted, she shifted, I felt individual paws on my kneecaps through the comforter, but she wouldn’t leave. So I went back to sleep.

Come morning, once I was thoroughly awake, I PUSHED her off and my first steps were the painful, faltering clumsiness I expect the morning after a dig-fest. But can I tell you? Both hip and knees have been JUST fine all day today.

So. Conclusion?

It appears, that in order to be effective at KittiReiki, you simply need to possess FUR.  

*I* need to add a comment here. In Nov of 2010, I went in for emergency surgery due to an intestinal obstruction. An adhesion was disentangled from my small intestine and a week later I was sent home. Over the next two weeks, all the horrifying symptoms came back and PC kept stretching herself out all along the LEFT side of my abdomen. Wouldn’t move. At the end of the two weeks of hell, I wound up in ER wretching my guts out and after a whole battery of tests,  they discovered a colon cancer tumor hiding IN my large intestine behind my stomach….. PC KNEW.