Nyx in the House of Night
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Oriental cats were also believed to bring luck. An old Buddhist superstition says that there will be silver in the house of a light cat, gold in the house of a dark one. The belief in cats as agents of luck and prosperity can still be seen in Japan in the Maneki Neko, or the Beckoning Cat, a white cat with a raised paw that’s displayed in many business establishments. There are at least three legends of how the Maneki Neko came into being, and all of them involve cats that brought luck or protection to their owners; one cat even killed a snake to save its geisha-mistress after the cat was beheaded. (You can find some of these legends at www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki_Neko.)
All of which brings us, finally, to the cats of the House of Night series.
THE CATS OF THE HOUSE OF NIGHT
“Cats choose us; we don’t own them.”
—Marked
The cats of the House of Night resonate with all of these traditions, but—though they are never referred to as such—their role is most like that of the familiar. Familiars are usually associated with witches, and vampyres aren’t exactly witches, though their worship of the Goddess and their rituals are very closely aligned with Pagan and Wiccan beliefs. The whole time I was reading the books, I couldn’t help thinking how much these cats were like familiars. And in The Fledgling Handbook 101, the ritual for saying good-bye to a deceased cat is called “Release of a Familiar.” But, as with the other mythical influences in the series, the idea of cats as familiars has been creatively modified to fit with the House of Night universe.
Familiars are exactly what their name implies—creatures who are familiar to you, as if, long before you first meet, you already know each other. Cats that are familiars are attuned to you on a psychic, possibly magical, level. It’s as if you and the cat are friends for all time, before this lifetime, in this lifetime, and in lifetimes still to come. The Casts nail this perfectly.
In Marked, before Zoey and Nala find each other, Zoey dreams of a little orange tabby who’s yelling at her in an old lady’s voice, asking what had taken her so long to get there. Then, when Zoey meets Nala—or, more precisely, when Nala finds her—Zoey recognizes the cat from her dream. They are already familiar to each other, because they share a psychic link.
Many people who have cats will tell you that cats are exquisitely tuned to their humans’ emotions, comforting their owners when they’re upset, making them laugh when they’re blue, giving them reproachful looks when they’re not doing what they should. Nala fits all of this to a tee. She’s the one who’s always there to comfort Zoey. After Zoey first drinks her first drop of Heath’s blood and is badly shaken by how much she craves it, Nala materializes and presses her face against Zoey’s wet cheek. After Zoey realizes that Loren and Neferet are lovers and that she, Zoey, has been set up and played for a fool, she runs to the old oak tree where she breaks down crying. Unsurprisingly, it’s Nala who appears, wet nose poking against Zoey’s cheek, putting a paw on her shoulder and “purring furiously.” Nala, who loves Zoey unconditionally, is the only one whom Zoey can tell just how badly she messed up. Later, as Zoey is reviewing all the pluses and minus in her life, Nala jumps into her arms to comfort her—and sneezes directly into Zoey’s face, giving Zoey a great last line for the book: “As usual, Nala summed up my life perfectly: kinda funny, kinda gross, and more than kinda messy” (Chosen).
To which I’d add, “And kinda magical.” Because even now the idea of a familiar goes far beyond pet and companion. Today, there are many people who openly practice Wiccan and Pagan rituals, and many of them consider their cats to be their familiars—equals who help perform magic and spells. Marion Weinstein (1939–2009), who was a priestess and a practicing witch in New York City, explained that cats make wonderful companions for witches because they’re not afraid of the unseen world or spirits, and they’re very good at knowing when the spirits are present and will often welcome them into a ceremony, making the witch’s task easier. Cats are also good at psychic work, able to communicate directly with their human, mind-to-mind.
Many cultures have believed cats could perceive things invisible to humans and even see into the future. As Van Vechten writes (in The Tiger in the House), people in the East “are aware that this animal wavers on the borderland between the natural and the supernatural, the conscious and the subconscious”—a description that makes me think of the vampyres, who are of the human world and also worlds beyond it. So it seems quite fitting that their chosen companions are cats, which also share this ability to walk in two worlds. And though the House of Night cats don’t turn into people or ghosts—at least not in the first seven books—their ability to perceive the supernatural realm allows them to warn their people of danger.
It’s easiest to see this in Nala, who, long before Stark becomes Zoey’s Warrior, is Zoey’s protector. When the first two dead fledglings reappear, it’s Nala who sees them first—who sees into the realm of the supernatural and perceives what Zoey’s still mostly human eyes can’t. Nala sees Elizabeth, the first of the undead vamps, and immediately hisses and spits. She even attacks Elliot, fighting to protect Zoey. It’s Nala launching herself at Elliot that makes Zoey realize that she’s not seeing a ghost; that these dead fledglings are somehow not dead. Even though Nala knows Stevie Rae well, when Stevie Rae returns from the dead, Nala yowls and spits and starts to hurl herself at her, which should warn Zoey that maybe this new incarnation of Stevie Rae is not completely trustworthy. Nala even seems to understand that Kalona is able to enter Zoey’s dreams. After dreaming of the fallen angel, Zoey wakes to find Nala growling at his dream presence. There’s no doubt that Nala can see into the spirit world.
As for the House of Night cats seeing the future, there’s that very cool moment in Marked when, soon after Nala finds her, Zoey returns to her room and essentially finds a cat starter kit, complete with cat food, litter box, litter, and a little pink collar. When Zoey asks Stevie Rae where the gift came from, Stevie Rae hands her a note. It reads: “Skylar told me she was coming. It was signed with a single letter: N.” In this case, not only does Skylar, Neferet’s cat, know that Nala has found and will move in with Zoey, but he’s able to communicate this to Neferet, who has an affinity for cats.
One thing I love about the cats in House of Night is that though the Casts clearly adore cats, they don’t sentimentalize them. These cats are not perfect mythic goddesses. Rather, Nala is often described as grumpy and complaining at Zoey like an old woman, and she is forever sneezing in Zoey’s face. Maleficent, the bad-tempered Persian Aphrodite rescues from Street Cats in Untamed, is often described by Zoey as Aphrodite’s snobby, “furry clone.” Beelzebub, the suitably named sleek gray cat who shares the “twins,” Shaunie and Erin, is forever chasing and terrorizing the other House of Night felines. The Casts know that cats are as individual as we are, and some of them have bad moods, wicked tempers, and a talent for holding grudges.
But the cats always come through, warning their vampyres of danger, even gathering together in Zoey’s room to let her know who her allies are. When Kalona and Neferet take over the House of Night and most of its population, Zoey finds Dragon Lankford’s Maine Coon and Professor Lenobia’s Siamese in her room and knows that the two professors can be trusted. The cats even provide a surprisingly coordinated distraction so that Jack can sit with Stark’s body in the morgue. When Zoey and her friends leave campus to stay in the tunnels with the red vampyres, the cats accompany them. And in one of the most touching scenes of the series, when Dragon sits by the funeral pyre for his wife, Anastasia, he has to stop Anastasia’s grieving white cat from hurling itself into the fire.
Cats seem to touch us on a deep, subconscious level. We have worshipped them as gods and burned them as witches. We have considered them symbols of healing and fertility, as well as incarnations of Satan. We’ve even convinced ourselves that they’re responsible for good and bad luck. Honestly, if you read enough cat lore what you get is that humans are capable of believing just about anything about any creature
. We have a bizarre ability to demonize or deify, and cats have been the objects of our best and worst impulses. And yet, through all the human extremes, cats have remained very much the same, true to themselves and their own unique, inscrutable nature.
The seventh book of the House of Night series, Burned, is oddly catless. This is because Zoey and her friends travel to Venice and beyond and simply can’t take the cats with them. I enjoyed the book completely. It’s a terrific story that draws on Celtic folklore and is quite different from all the others in the series. But much as I love it, I missed the cats.
Great Books on Cat Lore
Nine Lives: The Folklore of Cats, by Katherine M. Briggs
The Cult of the Cat, by Patricia Dale Green.
Cat Catalog: The Ultimate Cat Book, by Judy Fireman, ed.
The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
The Tiger in the House: The Classic Book on the History, Manners and Habits of the Cat, by Carl Van Vechten
Though most of these are older books, you can still find them easily at libraries or on used-book websites like www.abebooks.com. And a great collection of cat sayings can be found at www.catquotes.com/catquotes.htm.
ELLEN STEIBER is a writer and editor who lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she shares a house with her husband and Catalina, a very beautiful and mischievous tortoiseshell cat. Catalina, they all agree, runs the house. Ellen has written essays in A New Dawn, Demigods and Monsters, and The World of the Golden Compass, as well as the novel A Rumor of Gems. She is currently working on the sequel to the novel as well as a young adult novel. The young adult novel is set in Tucson and involves teenage girls, horses, and several very tricksy cats.
{ Reimagining “Magic City” }
HOW THE CASTS MYTHOLOGIZE TULSA
Amy H. Sturgis
MY OWN journey to the House of Night began with an email from my little sister, Margret. She explained that I should read—no, had to read—the novels by P.C. and Kristin Cast. While I appreciated her recommendation, I wasn’t exactly in the market for new titles to enjoy. My “to read” stack already was well out of hand.
Then Margret changed my mind with one simple sentence: “The books are set in Tulsa.”
The next thing I knew, I was reading the opening scene of the first book, in which a vampyre Tracker Marks Zoey Montgomery in the hall of her school and my alma mater, South Intermediate High School, in the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow. I was hooked.
Of course, familiarity has its own charm. Like Zoey, I’ve shopped at Utica Square, trusted meteorologist Travis Meyer for the day’s weather forecast, and even taken a science class from Mr. Wise, and this helped me to feel an immediate identification with the young fledgling. As I’ve read the series, I’ve enjoyed many an inside joke that no doubt qualifies as a “Tulsa thing,” from the similarity between Aphrodite’s father, Mayor LaFont, and Tulsa’s former mayor, William “Bill” LaFortune, to the ever-present digs at Broken Arrow’s main rival, Union. (Go Tigers!) As someone who grew up in Tulsa but now lives many miles away, I’ve appreciated how the novels can be read together as one extended and creative love letter to my hometown.
But the Casts have accomplished far more than giving former and current Tulsans a collective, cozy feeling of home. Certainly a number of contemporary series—including other young adult vampire series—use real-world locations for their settings. What sets the Casts’ House of Night novels apart is how the authors have harnessed the preexisting history and folklore of Tulsa, from its architecture to its ghost stories, to mythologize the town. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Tulsa was known as “Magic City” thanks to its oil boom and the immediate wealth it provided; today, P.C. and Kristin Cast have transformed Tulsa with their own equally rich form of magic.
TULSA AS A CHARACTER
In effect, the Casts make their reimagined Tulsa a character in its own right in the House of Night novels, and this marks their series as a contemporary example of a time-honored literary tradition: the Gothic romance. When Horace Walpole put ink to paper in 1764 and produced The Castle of Otranto, he created not only a genre, but also many of the rules it would follow, and soon the Gothic tradition that he pioneered gave birth to vampire fiction with works such as “The Vampyre” (1819) by John Polidori and “The Skeleton Count,” or “The Vampire Mistress” (1828) by Elizabeth Caroline Grey. As Jerrold E. Hogle points out in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, Gothic works blur the line between the natural and the supernatural. They also deal with secrets (that are either physically or psychologically haunting), focus on the past (either the past in general or a personal, recent past), and remain deeply rooted in their geographical settings.
As writers in the Gothic tradition, P.C. and Kristin Cast understand this well. They blur the line between the natural and supernatural routinely, as I first discovered when I read of a vampyre Tracker in my former high school. By steeping their novels in Tulsa and its folklore, the Casts also use local weather, tragic history, and notable landmarks in the city to evoke haunting secrets, provide a sense of the past, and allow readers to connect with their stories in a stirring, visceral way.
Certainly the authors have used Tulsa’s local weather to powerful effect. Perhaps the most striking example of this is the ice storm that features heavily in the events of the fifth and sixth novels, Hunted and Tempted. In these books, the storm heightens the characters’ sense of helplessness and isolation during dire events and hampers their ability to move, building dramatic tension. Tulsa’s loss of electricity due to the storm leaves the city paralyzed in darkness, appropriately symbolizing how Neferet and her new partner, the immortal Kalona, have unleashed evil on the town in their bid for personal power. P.C. noted in her blog that she and her daughter modeled their descriptions on the real ice storm that crippled Tulsa in December 2007. I doubt the storm would have seemed as authentic or eerie if the Casts hadn’t drawn on their firsthand memories of the event, and I can imagine that Tulsan readers of the House of Night series relived their own struggles with the storm while reading about the plight of Zoey and her friends.
The Casts also tap into the power of local history. One of the most memorable examples of this, to my mind, occurs in the second book of the series, Betrayed. When Zoey tries to explain her plan for involving the fledglings of the Dark Daughters and Sons in charity work in the local community, the House of Night’s High Priestess Neferet reminds her of the power of human fear and hatred toward vampyres. To explain the danger of prejudice Neferet might easily have called upon trite illustrations made bland by time, distance, and overuse. Instead, she refers to an event that is all too recent and painful in Tulsa memory: the Greenwood riots, also known as the Tulsa race riots.
From May 31 to June 1, 1921, a group of white Tulsans burned nearly thirty-five city blocks in Greenwood, the African-American section of town, utterly destroying the prosperous area known as “Black Wall Street.” This left approximately 10,000 black Tulsans homeless and an unknown number dead. According to Scott Ellsworth’s lauded history Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, the Greenwood riots represent one of the single most devastating moments of racial violence in a century of U.S. history. Today Tulsans of all races continue to consider and wrestle with the legacy of this tragedy. Thus when Neferet says, “Those African-American humans were part of Tulsa, and Tulsa destroyed them,” her words resonate deeply, because they refer to a very real and violent example from Tulsans’ very own backyard.
Fortunately, as Zoey points out, “it’s not 1920 anymore.” However, the Casts make it clear that prejudice is not simply a problem of the past. Tension between the human and vampyre populations boils just beneath the surface of their reimagined Tulsa, threatening to spill over violently at any moment. Perhaps more to the point, this prejudice represents a tool that can be used by unscrupulous leaders of both populations. Neferet herself later plays upon vampyres’ and humans’ hatred toward each other as she bui
lds her own base of power, illustrating how a people’s prejudices can make them easily led—and misled. The insight and seriousness with which the authors deal with the ongoing issues of fear and hatred suggest that they keep the lessons of Tulsa’s history close to heart as they craft their novels.
NOTABLE LANDMARKS
By incorporating recent weather and local history into their fiction, the Casts create a firm setting for the House of Night series, a Tulsa that feels three-dimensional, well grounded, and authentic. Then they take their literary game to yet another level by anchoring their stories to specific, real-world Tulsa landmarks. These locations come ready-made with their own mystique and folklore attached. In true Gothic style, the Casts enlist the city’s most remarkable places in the cause of their fiction, constructing new stories upon the mysteries and legends retold and refined by generations of Tulsans. The Casts’ mythologized Tulsa is so compelling, I would argue, because it springs from such deep-rooted sources. Obviously you don’t have to know the ins and outs of Tulsa firsthand in order to enjoy the House of Night series, but you can gain a greater appreciation of the Casts’ artistry if you consider the creative ways in which they employ the city’s notable sites.
Cascia Hall
Of course many of the settings featured in the novels, from the friendly Street Cats rescue to the tranquil Mary’s Grotto, do exist in Tulsa today. But the Casts reserve their most fantastic and intense action for some of Tulsa’s most atmospheric spots. One of these is Cascia Hall, the elite Catholic college preparatory school whose campus becomes Tulsa’s House of Night.