Cat Goddess

She found sweet solace in her cat's gentle purr...

In the sweet winter sunlight, this goddess emerged, with a sweet cat purring beneath her chin...

As I painted, I ruminated on my first cat love...

She was a wild grey cat who lived in our hay shed when I was about 11 or 12.

I discovered her one summer afternoon while playing hide-and-seek with my little sister in the hay bales. I'm not sure who scared each other more when I came face to face with her silver eyes, but she startled me even more when she casually sidled up to me, and jumped up to nudge her face against my hand. This was her trademark move - leaping up to self-stroke against me. So insistent in her affection, so loving yet independent.

I named her Steph (my dream name - such a child of the 80s I am).

We became firm and gentle friends of the wild.

She was a cat who would not be domesticated - I tried luring her home, but the backyard fence was as close as she would come. She was a cat who loved her hay shed, and would pour her love on me when I came to visit.

So I would - every afternoon, just to sit on the haybales and watch the sunset over the lake and the mountains, and to hang out with this strange, loving, wild cat.

Somehow, this is a metaphor of love for me... it does not come in the way you imagine, it is not something you can rein in or control. It just is, and you can only be in it, and experience it as open~heartedly as you can.

And there I painted this goddess, finding sweet solace in her cat's gentle purr. Somehow, sublimely, magically, endearingly, my dear dog decided that now was the time to crawl into my arms, head beneath mine, copying the pose in the painting, to remind me of this energy that is still in my life. I swear, if he could have purred, he would have...



Inside me there lives a girl of wild cats, horses in the paddocks, buffalo spirits, sunset mountains and dogs wanting to be cats...

with love and light,
Leonie