I know this sounds silly, but when I first met her cats when I first went up to her apartment, I thought I had stepped into a scene from Bell, Book and Candle; she was a witch, and her cats her familiars – a vague notion I still have since she seems to be able to cast a spell over those who come into her life.
Even the art work on the walls of her apartment (most of it her own) reminds me of the shop in the movie, and she has the same air as that witch, as if she knows she can cast a spell on people and there is nothing any of those who fall under it can do about it.
Her cats rub against the legs of the men who come into her life to see if they are worth, and perhaps enhance the atmosphere that consumes them, helping her to make it hard for those men to think – not drunk on the wine she serves, but their own hormone she stirs up, which makes them stagger around her witch’s den, not able to come or go without her guidance. A man goes in at his own peril and emerges from it, not so much unscathed as unchanged. Meeting her, breathing the same air she breathes, occupying the same space as her, changes you – not for good or bad, you just come out of it different.
So powerful is her spell on some men that they might sell their souls to remain under it – some try, but mostly fail, while many of those who profess to love her fall out of her spell and wander off.
She is alone far more often than she should be, although she always has her cats. They may be her truest friends, always there for her, demanding only food, water and a clean litter pan, keeping her company in her bed without drama. They do not pass judgement on her, purring when she pets them, leaving her along (except to walk across the keyboard of her computer) when she leaves them alone.
They are fiercely independent much in the way she wishes she could be.
For all her ability to put men under her spell, she is far too lonely far too often, and perhaps believes her spells have backfired on her. Perhaps, all spells of such kind of temporary, and come with a heavy price for temporary pleasure, each spell enacting a cost that makes it more difficult to perhaps find love that is not generated by a quick fix spell, making those moments of exhilarating joy shorter and those days (and nights) of loneliness longer, perhaps even seemingly endless, forcing her to cling to what joy she can get when she can get it, even if her familiars suggest the person under her temporary spell is not worthy.
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