I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

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LookingForAnswers
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I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

Post by LookingForAnswers »

Ok, let's start with my questions about familiars:

How do you get a familiar?
Can your pet be your familiar?
Do you have to do magic to have a familiar?
what does a familiar do?

now for my questions about pets:

Is there a way to communicate with your pet? Like, can you talk to pets in a similar way that would talk to trees? If there's already a topic that explains this, please give me the link to it!
Live and let live

~Squid~
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SnowCat
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Re: I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

Post by SnowCat »

My gray cat, Smoky, was my familiar for many years. He left us eight years ago. He was almost 16. I didn't have a familiar for a few years after that. Then my black cat, Spirit, decided she would be my familiar. Both cats were pets first, then familiars. Smoky protected me from a harmful entity at one point. I talk to all my cats just like I would talk to a person. Some day, one of them will probably talk like a human and scare me out of my wits.
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SpiritTalker
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Re: I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

Post by SpiritTalker »

My cat's send pictures & smells to tell me what flavor cat food can to open sometimes. Their meows and bleats express emotions clearly & display clear inquiry tones & statements, impatient demands as well as affection. Their tone of voice is recognizable as well as body language (tail up, half-mast, or drooping). They are excellent at nudging & prodding with their toes "feed moi." They know my voice tones ... "c'mere sweetums" vs "don't even think it, fuzzball" vs "feed the kitty???" vs "treats!!"

My own experience is with a familiar spirit (rather than a pet) who has guided, alerted me in real-time of danger & also led me through dreams and OOBE visits to various lectures & teachers when I needed them. Because of this I don't have animal familiars, but i do have cats that cling like Velcro. People claim their pet/animal familiars enjoy being part of the magical energy & I've only ever had one cat that clearly did so. The others - meh. ive written elsewhere about the differences of witchcraft trials history from popular assumptions. The search function for "familiars" brings up some topics.

A familiar chooses you by your energy signature. You cannot "make" a pet into a familiar because not all pets want to interact with your energy, even though they adore you. To force a pet to respond would be a burden to them IMO. Their eyes tell all.
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Re: I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

Post by LookingForAnswers »

SpiritTalker wrote:My cat's send pictures & smells to tell me what flavor cat food can to open sometimes. Their meows and bleats express emotions clearly & display clear inquiry tones & statements, impatient demands as well as affection. Their tone of voice is recognizable as well as body language (tail up, half-mast, or drooping). They are excellent at nudging & prodding with their toes "feed moi." They know my voice tones ... "c'mere sweetums" vs "don't even think it, fuzzball" vs "feed the kitty???"

My own experience is with a familiar spirit (rather than a pet) who has guided, alerted me in real-time of danger & also led me through dreams and OOBE visits to various lectures & teachers when I needed them. Because of this I don't have animal familiars, but i do have cats that cling like Velcro. People claim their pet/animal familiars enjoy being part of the magical energy & I've only ever had one cat that clearly did so. The others - meh. ive written elsewhere about the differences of witchcraft trials history from popular assumptions. The search function for "familiars" brings up some topics.

A familiar chooses you by your energy signature. You cannot "make" a pet into a familiar because not all pets want to interact with your energy, even though they adore you. To force a pet to respond would be a burden to them IMO. Their eyes tell all.
Ok, that makes more sense! So your familiar chooses you, not the other wat around?
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SpiritTalker
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Re: I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

Post by SpiritTalker »

The opossum who lives in the garage seems content with scraps I put out for him, grapes & dry cat chow, & uses a stiff legged stomp to let me know I've interrupted his dining if I intrude. He usually cruises by between 10:00 PM & midnight which is my optimal magical working hours. I have seen him sitting by the garage watching me when I've cast circles outdoors on a nice night. I'd call him an opportunist, not a familiar. He's just curious & wondering what the crazy two-legged is up to & hoping I have grapes left over.

If he decided to befriend me & entered the circle on his own then I'd know he'd accepted my energy signature as non-threatening. So far he just watches from about 10 feet away. I would never try to lure him into the circle ... Not even with grapes. That would betray his trust.

Sort of the way the cat's feel towards me during their annual flea bath when I've suddenly turned into Cruella DeVille.
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Re: I have a few questions regarding pets and familiars.

Post by Firebird »

SnowCat wrote:Some day, one of them will probably talk like a human and scare me out of my wits.
Yea, wouldn't that be a freak out, :shock: but until they do we have pretty good telepathy with them, ae Snow? I know with Pumpkin I look at her and think water and she perks right up, looks at me, meows then follows me to the kitchen.
She's having kidney issues these days. Still on sub cu fluids since February now. I wouldn't consider her my familiar though as she seems largely uninterested in magic, but our neighbors cat Dixie is right there almost every time the circle goes up. I would consider her my familiar, she's been joining our group since about 2008 when she was just a kitten of about 10 or 12 weeks old. I rarely see her on a mundane basis. I had a ferret once also that would usually trot into the room I was stirring up a brew or and incense and hang out with me, but he didn't seem to want to be in circle. He wasn't originally my pet but he ended up living with us for about 4 years until he got a brain tumor and had to be euthanized. I also had a free range rock dove (pigeon) that had fell out of a palm tree before it's feathers broke through. I nursed it to health and full grown and he ended up sticking around. He would hang out in the magic herb garden with me and he loved to come take a bath in the pools under the bushes when I watered. I wouldn't have considered this one my pet, but he acted in a familiar capacity for a brief time. My intention was to get him back into the wild, but he brought home Mrs. Dove one day and they proceeded to have several rounds of babies, until one day he flew off in the morning and never came back. We took the remaining birds to the hills far away to be free.
BB, Firebird
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