Nyx in the House of Night

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