They aren’t just cats… they’re everything to you…

Everyone knows or has heard of at least one crazy cat lady, so it’s not surprising that the archetype has made it into the Invisible Clergy by now. There’s even an action figure out there for this one… yes, really. Honestly, I was really surprised no one had written it up as an avatar yet.

As anyone who’s ever met one is well aware, crazy cat ladies creep the hell out of normal people. As a result, an avatar of the Crazy Cat Lady has a maximum effective Socialize skill with non-cat-lovers equal to (Soul – Avatar: the Crazy Cat Lady). So, for example, a Crazy Cat Lady with Soul 65 and Avatar: the Crazy Cat Lady 43 would have a maximum effective Socialize score of 22. This applies to other social skills as well, at GM discretion, except those related to intimidation. For game purposes, a non-cat-lover is anyone without a cat-related skill, passion or obsession on their character sheet.

Crazy Cat Ladies also have access to a special Soul skill, representing a special type of Proxy: the Familiar. A Crazy Cat Lady may pick one of her cats as her familiar (not all cat ladies play favorites, but some do), and may always roll her Familiar skill to perceive everything that cat is currently perceiving for as long as she wishes; essentially, this is a form of possession. (She receives a -20 shift to perceiving whatever’s actually around her while doing this.) She may also lend the cat any of her skills (including talking or walking on two legs) as long as she’s possessing it. Seeing a cat behave like a human in this way is a rank-2 Unnatural check (for walking on two legs) or rank-4 (for talking). If the familiar is killed, the Crazy Cat Lady instantly loses half of her Wound points, and must make a rank-5 Self check to represent the stress of losing such a special kitty. Choosing a new familiar requires the cat lady to kill her old one, which is a rank-8 Self check. This also halves your Familiar rating… your skill at the connection is preserved, but obviously the dead familar can no longer contribute to your mutual ability at connecting with each other.

Also, note that all avatar channels except the final one are only applicable to housecats, and to feral cats descended from housecats.

Attributes: Crazy Cat Ladies are all about taking care of their fuzzy little babies, to the exclusion of things like personal hygiene or having real jobs. As a result, they rarely leave their homes except to get cat food or litter, and many have so many cats that it’s more feasible to have such items delivered instead. Particularly creative cat ladies may release live mice in the house or try to cook gourmet meals for their furry masters, and particularly religious cat ladies may worship the goddess Bast, but both are optional. Wild hair, stained and out-of-date clothing, and smelling like a litterbox are all par for the course with cat ladies. Cat ladies are normally old and live alone (except for the cats, of course), though it might make sense for two cat ladies who were sisters to share a house. That, and with rare exceptions, they are female… the few male exceptions are usually gay.

Taboos: Being male is obviously a taboo, though it weakens the connection to the archetype only slightly if the other attributes are fulfilled. Owning fewer cats than your Avatar: the Crazy Cat Lady skill violates taboo, as does leaving them alone for more than 12 hours without automatic feeding and watering machines or a cat-sitter. Finally, losing a cat for any reason other than a serious disease or death weakens the connection with this archetype. So does owning any other type of pet, especially a dog. Even verbally expressing a preference for any other type of animal (including humans) above cats weakens the connection with the archetype.

Symbols: A litter scoop, cat toys (a ball of yarn, catnip, a feather on a pole, etc), scratching post, clothes with cat hair all over them, scratches or bites on the hands or arms, a water spray bottle, cans or bags of cat food, a statue of Bast, homemade art or pictures of your own cats

Masks: Bast (Egyptian), Freya (Norse), various medieval witches. Miss Havisham (from Great Expectations) is much like a cat lady, but is not depicted as having any cats.

Suspected Avatars in History: Crazy cat ladies are rarely famous, since they don’t get out much, but it’s fair to say that at least a few breeders or vets have been avatars.

1% – 50%: You can communicate with cats, and you may substitute your Avatar: the Crazy Cat Lady skill for any other social skill when dealing with cats if you wish. You gain a +5% shift on such rolls if you communicate by using hisses, purrs, meows and so on instead of your native language. Note that for observers, watching a cat follow your instructions or seeing you act on correct information they saw you receive from a cat can trigger a rank-1 or rank-2 Unnatural check (at GM’s discretion).

51% – 70%: You can now summon as large a group of cats from the immediate area (no more than a mile or two) as you wish, or a specific cat you know from any distance. You can control any cats summoned with this channel to a limited degree; they will not do anything immediately life-threatening, but they will fight for you or do your bidding. If you send them out of your presence, you receive general psychic impressions of what’s around them and what’s happening to them, but these are fairly vague… for more specific information, you need a Familiar.

71 – 90%: You may call upon the power of your archetype to temporarily imbue yourself with any one attribute of a cat. This includes things like claws; a heightened sense of sight, hearing, smell or balance; the ability to land on your feet if you fall; superior climbing ability; the ability to squeeze through tight spaces; danger sense; stealth or tracking. Consult with your GM for other possible uses of this channel. Only one modification may be in effect at a time, so choosing a new one causes the previous one to vanish.

91%+: At this level, your connection to all things feline is so great that you may use the rest of your channels on any type of feline, not just housecats. This includes jungle cats, mountain lions, pumas, and any other species of wild or zoo cat. This means lions and tigers can be made to escape the zoo to come and serve you, and even that one of them can be made a Familiar … if you don’t already have one, or are willing to kill the one you do already have.

What You Hear:
The godwalker of the Crazy Cat Lady is also an adept, and has learned how to gain magical charges by sucking out the souls of babies (just like cats supposedly do in legend).

Supposedly there a cat lady somewhere in upstate New York who has figured out how to survive on just two or three cans of cat food a day. Since she’s not the godwalker, no one’s really sure how she pulled it off.