My two girls, Masha and Mina are my Temperance angels!
There's a bit of a story behind why that is...
In December of 2007, my neighbour knocked my door to ask me if I had a black-and-white cat. At that time, I had three cats- a Maine Coon called Pickle, a Chartreux called Murzik, and a tabby called Muffin; none of which were that colour. There's a neighbourhood cat we've christened George who pops in now and again for food and cuddles who fits that description, so I went outside to see what had happened. This was a fluffy cat that I'd never seen before, and he was lying on their front step and shivering. He'd either been out 'doing the rounds' and his heart had given out, or he'd been hit by a car and managed to crawl to their step.
I was overwhelmed by compassion for this creature, and sat by him, gently stroking him and talking quietly to him. He reached out and made a supreme effort to touch me with his paw, before his life slipped away- I was comforting him as he passed. We soon discovered that somebody over the road had such a cat who'd gone missing, and when they confirmed that this was their cat, they were upset, but grateful to me that I'd been there for him when he died, so at least he wasn't alone and was in peace. In January 2008, exactly one month to the day after that event, my Maine Coon, Pickle, managed to find his way around the front of the house (We've taken great precautions to keep our cats away from the main road) and had been run over and killed during the night. We were distraught, and after burying him in his favourite spot in the garden, we offered prayers and tried to get on with our lives.
A while later, we found ourselves looking in a pet shop at some beautiful kittens; two females from the same litter, one calico, one white Angora. As we were looking at them, the Angora reached out and touched me with her paw in exactly the same way that the black and white cat had done. I took this as a sign, and we ended up buying both of them. The white cat, now called Mina, has become my Tarot 'muse', and sits by me every time I do a Tarot card reading, and when she's out in the garden, Masha steps in for 'muse' duty, and sits by me during readings. I do daily readings, and my wife also has Tarot decks, and she had decided to do a daily reading on that day as well, which she doesn't usually do. Both readings were Temperance- the deck I was using was the Thoth, which had a white lion at the bottom of the card, and her deck was the Baroque Bohemian Cats' Tarot, which showed the Temperance angel as a calico cat. To further add to the weirdness of the situation, this pet shop also did veterinary checks for all the kittens they sold, which included documentation showing the date of birth of the litter. When we checked our kitten's documents, they were born the morning after that black and white cat had died.
Of my other cats, I'm convinced Murzik is the Emperor, as he rules the house with an iron paw- and Muffin is the Hermit, always very quiet, taciturn, and the epitome of 'zen'.
