Sneaky, Izzy, and The Smurf — A Tale of Three Kitties
Part Two: Izzy & The Smurf
You can read part one: “Sneaky Le Boo” Here
“I’ve never seen her do this before,” the woman said as the big brownish/reddish tabby marched back and forth in front of us. “She usually hides in the closet when people come for a visit.”
We were sitting on the Spanish tile floor of a bedroom that housed at least 15 adult Maine Coons. They were all castoffs in one way or another, either not adopted as kittens or ones that did not work out as mama cats, or ones that were supposed to show and were not into it. There were also Maine Coons from elsewhere that needed homes. The breeder both bred and sold Maine Coon kittens and also operated a rescue for adult Main Coons. We were there for the rescue part of her operation. Sneaky had left us only 4 days prior and we were “just there to look”.
I had actually come across the website for this particular breeder a few weeks earlier. I had gotten it into my head that maybe Sneaky needed a feline companion and had started to look at rescues and at breeders who also rescued Maine Coons. I had given her a call back then and she let me know she had a number of adults who needed homes. A few days afterward, however, Sneaky started her decline and then left us a couple of weeks later.
Three days after Sneaky’s death I found myself once again on Anna’s website.
A quick phone call later, and we were set to head over there the next day.
We left our ocean neighborhood and headed inland into northern San Diego County, into the citrus groves and gated communities. Izzy and The Smurf resided in one of these gated communities in a giant house that was in the process of being renovated. We were greeted by a big herding dog as we came up their drive and he showed us to the door. Anna and her husband watched us and I knew all three were vetting us. We seemed to pass the dog test, as he gave me kisses before running off and Anna took us to the cattery (the bedroom that housed this group of cats).
“Normally the cats are all over the house,” she said. “But with the work being done we’ve had to isolate them all in different rooms ever since I heard meowing last week and found one of our kitties up in the rafters of the unfinished kitchen ceiling.”
We walked into a room that had 2 giant cat trees (that looked like actual carpeted trees), dishes of food scattered about, 4 huge litter boxes, and Maine Coons, everywhere, lounging in the trees, in the window sill, laying on the floor. Maine Coons are big cats, usually ranging in size from 12–22 pounds and most were of the larger variety.
Many of them looked up when we entered and started towards us to say, “Hi.” Maine Coons are typically very social and friendly beings. My eyes/heart immediately locked onto the beautiful, soft, brown, black, and white faerie kitty with super fancy whiskers up at the very top of one of the trees. But it was Isabella, an emissary from the Pleiades, who made it to us (really Jon) first. And she claimed us, then and there, talking to us, telling us to sit on the floor, and then marching back and forth in front of us, keeping the other kitties at bay (literally swatting and hissing at anyone else who tried to make friends with us). The pretty multicolored girl tried to come to see me, she knew I wanted her to, but Izzy chased her off, and she retreated back up her tree. We were hers and she was NOT having it from anyone else.
In amazement, Anna said, “I’ve never seen her do this before.”
“What’s her story?” I asked while petting her as she continued marching. Her purr was the loudest purr I had ever heard, like a motor.
“She’ll be four years old in a month. She was originally supposed to be a mama kitty. She had one litter but she really was not suited for it. She can be pretty anxious.”
She was clearly anxious and bossy and also a huge love monster, and she cracked us up with her very clear communication skills.
“Well, if we do decide to adopt, we’d like to take two.” Jon and I had always hated leaving Sneaky alone and really felt like having two together would be better for everyone.
And like magic, upon hearing this, Izzy backed off and let all of the other kitties greet us. They were marvelous and beautiful, all females with one older male in the mix, soft and loving and curious.
Faerie girl was still up in her tree after being chased off by Izzy. I got up off of the floor, walked over to her, picked her up, and held her in my arms like an infant, cradled. She looked directly into my eyes, sending me such a huge heart-opening transmission of love that I started crying, remaining grief from the loss of Sneaky leaking out of my eyes.
Two and half year old Ursula had been destined for greatness. Her brother Teddy was an award-winning super champion Mr. Fancy Pants show cat, and her future was written for her the moment her beauty was evident. Alas, Ursula rejected the show life and masqueraded as a normal cat until our arrival.
It seemed pretty clear, these were our girls. But since it had only been a few days since Sneaky had left us and we were just there to look, we let Anna know we needed a little time to think and we would be in touch.
Truthfully, there was another issue at hand. I was having a really hard time reconciling adopting from a breeder when I knew how many cats in shelters needed rescuing.
So for the next three weeks, Jon and I set off on an epic journey to meet every single cat available for rescue in all of San Diego County, okay, not truly every cat, but we met at least 200 cats and kittens, even going as far as Malibu, driving up a crazy one lane cliffside road (have I mentioned my phobia of driving on cliffside roads yet in one of my stories? Well if I have not yet, now you know) to a property whose then recently dead owner had bequeathed to an animal rescue operation.
However, when love comes, it comes, no matter the form, no matter the package, and no matter what one’s attachments and judgments are. We could try to talk ourselves into something else until we were breathless and arguing (and we did, of course, talk and argue incessantly) about something that clearly had already been determined.
We called Anna back and said we’d like to come back again to visit with Isabella and Ursula and if things went well on this visit we’d like to adopt.
“I just want a cat that will sit in my lap,” Jon said a couple of days before our return there. Sneaky was not really a lap cat. Jon had met a cat named “Larry” who lived in a small shop in Northern California and had jumped into Jon’s lap and made himself at home there on a couch one foggy afternoon, and since Jon had been looking for his “Larry”.
We returned to Anna’s, greeted again by more dogs, all of whom crowded around us and escorted us in, and she took us to the cat room. We walked in, Isabella let out a loud meow and ran right to us.
“Meow! Meow! (Where have you been?!) Meow! Meow! (I’ve been waiting forever for you to come back!”)
Laughing we sat on the floor, convinced then that her first interaction with us was not just some fluke, and then amazed watched as she got right into Jon’s lap, curled up, put her head on his knee, and started purring. At one point she got out of Jon’s lap and tried to get in mine, but she was a bit too big to fit in the position I was sitting in and half fell out. She got up, hissed at me indignantly, and got back in Jon’s lap. To be honest, I was a little bit afraid of her.
Ursula was once again in a tree and I went and said hello receiving kisses from her on my hand and then picked her up and brought her back down with me, seating myself on the floor next to Jon and Isabella. Ursula let me hold her for a bit and we all harmonized together, making sure she and Isabella were cool with one another, and then she scampered off. She would never be a lap cat. In her old age, she might, if you were very lucky, jump up on the couch and curl up right against you, sleeping, but she would never sit in a lap. Her one exception to this rule was that she might sneak in while you were sleeping and get on top of you, but only if you were sleeping, and if you woke up while she was settling herself, she’d run off.
“Before we commit, I need to make sure I can pick up Isabella,” I said. She had been fine getting in our laps and giving us affection, but I had not yet tried to handle her myself. Noting her anxiety, I was concerned she’d react negatively to being handled. She was on a piece of furniture next to Anna. I got behind her, told her I was going to pick her up, and then did, without issue. She went soft in my arms. And she was heavy, a good 16 pounds or so.
Anna said, “I would never adopt her to you if she were truly aggressive. She’s just a little anxious.”
“We’d like to take them,” we let her know. “We’d like to come back and pick them up in a few days.” Our house was a mess and we had some things we needed to do that would cause us not to be home for an extended period of time the next day. We wanted to wait to bring them home until we could have solid time with them.
“Bye Isabella,” Jon said as he bent down to pet her goodbye. Oh, she was mad! She hissed and swatted at him, not at all happy that she was not yet leaving with us. Izzy sent Jon off bleeding while Ursula sent us love from her tree.
Three days later we returned. While writing a check for the adoption fee, Anna put the girls each in a carrier. “They went right in with no resistance,” she said. If you’ve had a cat, you know how challenging it can be to get them in a carrier.
The car ride home was a non-event. We brought them in, let them loose, and watched with delight as they explored every single inch of our house, running from room to room, checking in with each other constantly. Insatiably curious and slightly freaked out to find they suddenly had a new home, their self-guided tour ended with both of them huddled together underneath our bed. Jon and I lay on the floor trying to coax them out and eventually they returned to our arms. Exhausted we took naps on the 2 couches in the living room, each of us with a kitty snuggled next to us, Jon with Ursula, and me with Izzy (she had already become Izzy). Even though initially it had looked like Izzy might be more Jon’s cat and Ursula might be more my cat, they let us know on that first day that they did not play that way. They loved us equally and perceived the two of us as a unit.
Lala (this was Ursula’s name at the time, Ursula felt too formal and Lala was the only shorter version of her name that seemed to sort of work) was a daredevil. If you recall, when I first met her she was perched on the topmost ledge of a cat tree. Lala would find the highest place she could in any room she was in and leap into that spot in one jump. I’d watch her as she’d rev up her hindquarters and then fly directly from the floor to the very top of our tallest dresser piled even higher with a stack of sweaters on top and stick her landing on that precarious pad, beautifully, settling herself in for an elevated nap.
She also loved a good game, any and every kind of game. At two and a half she was still very kitten-like at times, and she and I had many a play session. On their first morning with us, I was up early, at my computer, drinking coffee, and Lala was hanging out with me. I heard some rustling behind me and saw Lala batting a wadded-up post-it note around that had missed the garbage can when I tossed it earlier. I picked it up and threw it into the kitchen. She scampered after it and returned a moment later batting it all the way back to my foot. She sat and looked at me. I picked it up and tossed it as far as I could. She returned it to me, again and again, and again. I laughed hysterically while playing fetch with my new kitty. She never tired of it.
Izzy and Jon were still sleeping. Izzy had claimed the bed that first night. Initially, when I got in bed, Ursula jumped up with me. Izzy came in shortly afterward to see what was up. She saw that Ursula had found something good, and then chased her out. This is how it went initially in our home with them. Ursula was much more confident than Izzy when it came to new experiences and adventures or anything new we brought into the house so she would get there first. Izzy would watch for a bit and then bully Ursula out of whatever it was, and Ursula would acquiesce, not looking for a battle. Typically Izzy would claim whatever it was for a period of time and then grow bored and move on. At that point, Ursula would return and stake her claim. They timeshared a lot of areas in our home, with the exception of our bed. For the duration of our time in that house, our bed was only and always Izzy’s.
Many a time one of us would hear the other say, “Izzy!” with a disapproving tone as she bossed her younger sister in those first few months with them. Oftentimes we would scold Izzy lovingly and then she would turn and try to pick a fight with Lala, classic big sister/little sister dynamics.
Izzy was this crazy combination of pure social energy, she loved all people and always had to be the first to greet anyone who came to our door, coupled with extreme anxiety at times. It made for a very unpredictable period of time there in the beginning with her. We were never sure whether or not we were going to get kissed and nuzzled or swatted at and bit. She bit, hard, never breaking the skin, but definitely letting you know she could if she wanted to. And she was not at all shy about using her claws on us. Jon and I were bloody off and on for the better part of that first year with them. If you happened to pet her in the wrong spot, ouch! It took years before I could touch her belly without getting injured. But her spirit, humor, and love completely outdistanced those bloody moments.
Now, Ursula, she would never swat you, never bite you, never, UNLESS you were in the middle of a game with her and she decided that she needed to swat (usually marshmallow paw) or bite down to win. Cheater. I also loved to tickle the tip of her nose with my finger until she’d get this super mad look in her eye and then whack the shit out of my hand. It was one of our favorite games.
Disclaimer: I am not nor should I ever be a professional cat trainer.
It took about 4 months for the two of them to work out their thing. A few times during that first month our concern for their relationship was so great we worried that perhaps we’d made a mistake bringing them both home. We have since learned that every single human whoever brings any animal home with them wonders at least a few times initially if perhaps they had made a terrible, terrible mistake. Thankfully those moments were few and far between, and by the second month due to much patience, love, energy work, flower essences, and the simple passage of time, their interactions were getting more and more loving.
“Izzy just touched noses with Lala!” I shouted to Jon one morning. We knew at that point we were all good.
One morning Ursula was curled up looking otherworldly and cute as she always did and Jon exclaimed, “You’re such a smurf!” And like Sneaky before her, the ridiculous name her father gave her stuck. But she was not Smurf. She was The Smurf and then “Smurf” for short, her faerie princess royalty there always in the background, with Izzy her Pleiadian Queen by her side.
As they settled in and we all got more into a groove together as a family, it became more and more apparent to us that life in Encinitas was not really working out for us as we had hoped it would. You may remember from part one of this story the very difficult time we had even finding a place to live. As hard as we tried and as many spaces as we looked at, we could not find an appropriate place to teach classes or for me to do any readings. I was still seeing clients in person, yet there was little to no interest in me and my work at the time locally, so we were primarily sustaining ourselves with my private phone sessions and the occasional reiki and channeling classes we set up in our home. At least one-third of my clientele dropped off and we were seriously starting to worry.
At the same time (this was the fall of 2008) Jon and I sat down and began to do some channeled recordings together, just he and I. He would ask the questions and I would direct voice channel lengthy responses from The Pleiadians and the other beings I worked with, and they all let us know that we were in the middle of a massive transition, that my identity as a psychic/intuitive reader who also happened to channel would be shifting to me bringing my direct voice channeling to the fore and focusing on the integration of the 5D consciousness/higher self. The decrease in private sessions was to allow for this change to evolve. The information was helpful and eased some of our stress, but we still were watching the numbers in our checking account get lower each month.
We started to look for a place for me to hold a channeling event. The plan was I would direct-voice-channel for about an hour. Again we kept coming up dry, more often than not the spaces were way out of our price range, and for the few that would have worked financially, well, the energy was just off for one reason or another. We found ourselves sharing about this with Bety, the owner of Bety’s Tacos, our favorite restaurant in Encinitas. Just thinking about it makes me want to eat there. Everything was housemade and delicious. We’d go out looking at spaces to channel in and wind up frustrated at Bety’s, eating her delicious food and talking with her about reincarnation and channeling and all things metaphysical.
At our wits ends Jon said to me, “What would you think about channeling at Bety’s?”
“Yes!”
“Any good thing is a good thing,” was her response as she agreed to open her space up to our work. The plan was we’d advertise it so people would come in early and eat and she would stay open an hour longer than normal for my event.
We did three of them there, the first in February of 2009. They were sweet and intimate and charming and delicious and would set the stage for all that I am currently doing today. We had hoped that these events would open other doors in Encinitas and San Diego County, but those doors did not open. It just was not happening there for us, other than what little phone work I was doing and The Pleiadians and tacos.
We were stressed, feeling at a loss, knowing we needed to make a change and not sure what to do. Jon and I were outside on the deck, listening to the waves on a spectacularly clear February night. The kitties were inside. They were indoor-only cats at the time. They had been their whole lives. We had tried once to take them out onto the deck and once again in the front yard, and they both squirmed and resisted, demanding to go back into the safety of their house.
We had been talking, Jon and I, and then we fell silent, listening to the waves and looking at the night sky. And above us, suddenly appeared gigantic cloud replications of Izzy and The Smurf. These were not clouds that kind of looked like our cats. These were as if a sculptor had climbed into a giant mass of cloud formations and expertly carved our girls, exactly as they were, every hair and whisker, perfectly etched upon the ethers. They floated above us, a perfect cloud Izzy, and a perfect cloud The Smurf. HUGE.
Jon and I sat, stunned, watching as they stayed in place above us and then finally began to drift away replaced by two more, exactly the same yet this time just a bit smaller.
“Holy shit,” I said. “What do you think this means?”
“I think they are telling us that everything is going to be okay.”
And I could feel the relief flooding my body as I relaxed into receiving our etheric support.
It’s not like we woke up the next morning and everything was fine. Our world looked just as it had the day prior, but something had shifted. The feeling was slight, gentle, and we knew that we simply needed to wait.
About a month later I awoke one morning and got on Craiglist as I normally did. We had been looking for somewhere more affordable to live in Encinitas, and this was just one other thing that was not happening.
“Ojai,” came into my consciousness.
“Ojai? Really? We did not like Ojai,” I replied to myself/higher self/Pleiadians/faeries/etc
“Yes. Ojai,” insistent.
“Alright, already,” I know better than to argue when the message is loud and clear like this one was. I did not always know better, but by this point, I had learned this lesson (mostly, anyway).
I pulled up the rental list for Ojai on Craigslist and immediately found 3 houses in our price range.
“Hey Jon, I think we need to check out Ojai again.”
“But we did not like Ojai.”
“Our people are telling me to have a look.”
Later that day we went to Tomatomania at the local nursery. It was a lecture on tomato growing and then a sale of their tomato plants by two men who own a tomato farm in, you guessed it, Ojai. We did not know about the Ojai bit until they mentioned it during their presentation.
We spoke with them afterward.
“We love Ojai. You have to check out Ojai. You’ll love Ojai.”
Alright already.
We got our hair cut later that day. She was new to us and new to the area. She had just moved down from………………………………………wait for it……………………………………………………………Ojai!
We went to a healing workshop the following day. We were there as “clients” for the student practitioners to work on. Jon’s practitioner was a lovely woman who lived in Carpinteria and spent a lot of time in………Ojai.
Three Ojais in 3 encounters after being nudged in the direction of Ojai. That Monday I got on the phone and made some appointments to look at rentals for the following day.
I was pretty sure I knew which one it was going to be even before we got there. We had 5 houses to look at, three in Ojai and 2 others in southern Santa Barbara County. We saw the 2 in SB county first, had lunch with Jon’s healer from the other day, and then headed up to Ojai. We knew at that point the 2 places we’d looked at in SB County were not for us.
Our first appointment was in Meiners Oaks, a little neighborhood about a mile and a half from downtown Ojai proper. This was the one I thought might be the one. We were early for our appointment so we headed to The Farmer and The Cook, a truly unique restaurant, cafe, and market with their very own organic farm a couple of miles from the restaurant. This charming place was located about half a block from the rental we’d be looking at. We knew as soon as we walked into The Farmer and The Cook that we’d 100 percent for sure be moving to Ojai. I said the words aloud to the dude who was stocking the produce.
We headed back down to the house we were scheduled to look at. The landlord opened the front door, I looked at the living room and said, “Oh yes, this is the house we’ll be moving into.”
It was just enough space for us, just. It was definitely going to be smaller than anywhere we’d been living since leaving my 500-square-foot apartment in Chicago back in 2003, but the energy and space felt completely right to us. We engaged in a lengthy conversation with the landlord who was completely open and interested in my work. He was already way into alternative thinking and metaphysics and it seemed as if it were all meant to be.
We had one other property to look at, and this choice threw us into a conundrum. This one was in Ojai proper. It was a two-bedroom house with a detached studio with its own bathroom and a really nice-sized yard with a hot tub. The set up of two buildings is one that we have found works the best for us. In Guerneville, Jon had the whole garage to himself for his music/audio engineering studio, and that worked really well. The ceilings here in this house were low, however, and it was just a bit dark. We also did not connect with the landlords here nearly as we had at the other house. We’ve made the mistake in the past, of being distracted by the shiny surface (2 buildings) and not noticing the vibrational incompatibilities. This was one of those moments when we were asking ourselves to pay attention and pay attention we did.
It would be the house in Meiners Oaks.
We swung back over to there, let him know we’d like to take it, and then headed back to Encinitas to tell the kitties and pack up our lives, once again.
