BAST'S MESSAGES TO HUMANS CONCERNING HER CHILDREN

Translated Best As Possible By CHORONZON

 

1. My anger at the deranged amongst you is balanced by the relief that for every mistreated cat, there are a thousand others to who you have brought joy, in addition to the necessities of survival.

 

2. It took me hundreds of years, along with many among my children, to trust you enough--after what happened centuries ago when cats were summarily destroyed as the familiars of witches. But though there is still ignorance in the human world, there is also a great explosion of its opposite, and the opposite is winning, even if it doesn't always seem that way.

 

3. I recognize and give my plaudits to the heroes among you who work tirelessly to care for my children when they have been harmed, or are ill, even if they do not yet know and connect with the strange cats they save. There are other stellar humans who fight to put away the deranged among themselves who commit atrocity against my children (as well as the canine children of the wolf god Fenrir.) This is a difficult thing for you yet you still sacrifice much time and resources to do it, and it warms my being.

 

4. A cat has a window of time at the age of six to eight weeks when that individual baby cat's mind forms its core experience of reality. The same is true for human infants at the age of three years. It's vital to be attentive and as gentle as possible with our young ones if we want them to grow up to be creatures who will know how to love, and know that they are loved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. If you give love to a cat, the cat will feel it, and will know if it is real. It may require patience to overlay bad previous memories with present good ones. This is true of both cats and human people. To get to know how to show a cat love, pay attention to their gestures, for cats talk with their tails, ears, eyes. You also speak with gestures, and cats do learn what they mean.

 

6. So care for my children, but also see that you love your own enough to pay enough attention to them that they don't feel ignored in their early years, for if anything will curb future derangement in the human mind that leads into violent acts most readily, it is that kind of love that can only be noticed by the child if you are really paying attention, not merely trying to buy their love, or get a responsibility over with. One of the way you help save us is by saving your own kind. One by one.

 

7. Once upon a hundred thousand years ago perhaps cats were fit to be wild and independent, and the world around made that a viable way to live. But not any more. Today's cats have been bred to interact with humanity and bond with humans as their guardians and companions. Because of this, I will try harder to push my little ones not to have so many little ones of their own - but cats are notoriously resistant to lectures, even from their patron goddess-mother. It is in the hands of humanity to make us less fertile, because most cat death occurs in the dim jails of shelters that are forced to destroy what they cannot care for.

 

8. Unless you are well-off enough to care for, and have the time to spend with, a litter of grown cats, use the internet to love little kittens. Don't let my females go intact otherwise, for sooner or later it will result in kittens. How many a beautiful cat has been destroyed because someone wanted to play with kittens and lost interest when they weren't babies any longer.

 

9. It pleases me greatly that the majority of humans who are guardians for cats know this already, and practice it.

 

10. Cats are evolving. They're not existing in a vacuum - as your world changes, and you change, cats will also change: in the past thirty years, they have begun living longer, and also becoming smarter, generation by generation, because human beings have taken the time to learn their needs and wants.

 

11. They will reward you in return with a life of virtually unconditional love. Don't feel that enjoying this love makes you crazy. It would be truly "crazy" to deny yourselves such joy, if you really desired to experience it, just to appear less 'kooky' to other humans.

 

12. If a dog shows you love, it's usually because the dog has been trained to do that. But if a cat shows you love, when s/he could be doing something else, it's because s/he really wants to be doing exactly that! - for cats only do what THEY want. Be proud!

 

13. Never punish a cat. It will not work, and simply make the cat mad at you.

 

14. The definition for 'love' is this: if you say or do anything that lets another living mind know that your own life is ineffably enriched just because another living mind exists, and just being in your life is enough to inspire that feeling, you are expressing love. Just love your companion cats, and love one another.