Familiars

Familiars are cats with a supernatural affinity for magical and otherworldly beings, whom they seek out as companions. Through Valera’s relationship with them, they are more than household animals: they connect her to animal thought and inherited feline knowledge, and help her understand how magic can be used responsibly.

Nature and Companionship

Valera explains that Familiars are a special sort of cat who seek out magical and supernatural beings to make homes with. Her own cats live with her in warmth and comfort. Their bond with her is intimate but not simply obedient: they are headstrong and sometimes spoiled, and Valera manages them with patience and practicality.

Penchant illustrates both their closeness and their independence. When Valera calls him to help with a body wrapped in burlap and secured by rope and steel chains, he comes into the room, his collar jingling as its silver pentacle charm strikes the attached bell. The tiger-striped cat leaps onto Valera’s back and winds over her shoulders and beneath her hair. Yet when she taps the chain and commands him to help, he pauses on her shoulder to decide whether he cares to. Being a good Familiar does not cancel his capacity to behave like a cat.

Communication and Inherited Knowledge

Valera’s cats are connected to her through a form of telepathic communication. Sagan recalls first seeing her speak with Fat Baby, a fat gray cat, and initially mistaking her behavior for eccentricity brought on by prolonged solitude. He soon recognized the telepathic connection she was using. Valera attributes the cats’ ability to speak with her to their Familiar nature; Sagan, himself supernatural and telepathic, suspects that Valera’s own magic makes the communication possible, since the cats do not speak to him.

The cats also transmit feline knowledge across generations. Valera first discovered this after going to town one spring and finding herself followed by an army of stray cats. Their thoughts revealed that the aged wisdom of cats passed from one generation to the next, though the cats shared it sporadically and on their own terms. The strays eventually lived with her, exchanging their company and counsel for warmth and comfort.

Role in Valera’s Understanding of Magic

The cats’ guidance helps Valera distinguish the use of magic from its moral purpose. Having seen practitioners use power cruelly, she had feared that magic itself would corrupt her and tried to avoid using it. The cats taught her that magic was not inherently bad: what mattered was whether a spell’s intent was good, and whether it was used with moral discretion. Healing and protection could serve good ends, but even such spells could become corrupting when used for wicked purposes.

That lesson gives the Familiars a formative role in Valera’s life. Their inherited wisdom does not merely answer questions; it helps her find a way to use her abilities without repeating the cruelty that had driven her away from others like herself. At the same time, their selective, feline manner of sharing knowledge keeps the relationship reciprocal rather than reducing them to instruments of instruction.