Athena's Cat

The Goddess, her pet, and a truly incredible sacrifice

Sitting across the table from my friend Knikki, holding onto her hand so very tightly - our coffees sitting forgotten on the table between us, other cafe patrons sitting totally forgotten in the space around us - as an incredibly potent moment unfolds here, and tears fall down both of our faces.

“I’m so sorry,” I say slowly, trying to be mindful enough to leave plenty of space for my tears, “I know what’s coming. And I am so sorry…”

each of my dragon pairings is unique and so, so special. and this one… THIS ONE! … blew my ever-loving mind. So here… I have a story for you… I don’t know where we’re going. But I trust it’s somewhere magnificent.

🐉✨

Athena, favoured daughter of our beloved Zeus - who sprung from his head, fully formed, after he’d swallowed her mother in an attempt to thwart a rather foreboding prophecy (couldn’t keep her from living, though! Go, our darling strong Athena, go!!) - has a secret.

She likes to keep pets.

Owls. Cats. Birds.

You name it.

She loves it.

And her favourite?

Her favourite pet of all?? The one she feels the absolute fondest of? (Even if she can only watch them from afar...)

Humans.

The humans she gets to spy on. These sweet little pets with their oh-so-very-human quarrels and trials, their play acting through love and through despair - how quaint us humans are! Play-acting as we do, our roles as tiny gods.

She peers down at us from her perch high up on Mount Olympus, with the rest of the gods and goddesses and the titans and the giants. She will often lose entire days, lying on her belly and peering down at us. Arms folded beneath her tiny chin, grass stains slowly blooming across her gown (what, you thought gods and goddesses were immune to the basic relationship between fabric and dirt??!! They’re quite different form us… but not that different.)

Others may tease her Athenaaaaa, not again!! Can’t you find something better to do with your time?

Or not understand her at all. Atheennaaaaa what are you doooiiinnngg??

But her father smiles at her knowingly, when he sees her watching (again!) - he’s quite fond of us, too.

(oh Zeus! A moment of love for you!! And for Atlas, and Rebekah, too, while we’re at it. We bow before your collective & eternal love.)

One day, Athena is doing just that.

Lying on the grass, chin resting on her arms, navy blue dress spread out gracefully beneath her (aha! blue won’t stain on the grass!! victory) with her beloved cat, Freya, snoozing peacefully in the centre of her back, right between her shoulder blades. Freya is a pleasant and delightful weight; and the feline rises and falls, rises and falls, with every breath Athena takes. In and out. Up and down.

In and out.

Up and down.

sigh of contentment. can you imagine a more peaceful scene??

Wait… let us fill it in and make it more peaceful!

Big fluffy white clouds drift slowly across the sky.

The sun kisses the crown of Athena’s head, colouring the air with the fragrance of honey as her honey-gold hair warms beneath those benevolent rays.

Birds gently sing back and forth to each other in the branches above their heads, as children on the neighbouring slope laugh and laugh and laugh as they roll down and down and down the hill. And Freya’s nose twitches in her sleep as a butterfly comes past to dance upon it, just briefly.

There. sigh of contentment.

We smile. Let’s all gently smile together (feel the peace settle in over you?? Sigh.)

And what about what’s happening down here on earth?

What is Athena watching?

Athena keeps any eye out for glimpses of us between the clouds drifting pass.

She chuckles with fondness watching a gentleman pick a daisy and hand it to his love - who smiles and receives it, with visible delight.

She laughs whole-heartedly as a puppy escapes from his owner with a quick little manoeuvre between his legs - tripping them both up, until the puppy is free to bound with delightful & deliberate chaos straight into the muddiest puddle that ever muddied any puppy’s feet ever in the history of ever!! Chaos!! Delight!!! What fun!!!

She sees hammocks and paper airplanes and cartwheels and freedom.

She sees bliss and delight and laughter and wonder and pleasure and awe.

This human life!!!!

She sees food shared and hugs exchanged, laughter that bubbles up effortlessly and smiles so wide the sun laughs in return!!

Is there anything more beautiful?? I think there’s nothing more beautiful than this.

Athena is wont to agree.

She sees lovers kiss and feels her own core turn molten with desire as they tumble into bed together. More and more and more.

It is love and it is beautiful it’s all so beautiful.

Everywhere she looks, there’s only ever beauty to be found.

Athena breathes in and out. In and out.

And Freya purrs gently, rising up and down. Up and down.

With every breath. Together.

this is bound to leave a mark.

But what happens?

Something happens.

In one quick breath, that’s enough time for everything to change.

Athena’s breath hitches painfully in her chest. No!

Her stomach drops down to the basement of her feet. Stop!

Her hands fly up (unbidden!!) to cover her mouth with shock. NO!

NO!

(can you feel it? this is terror.)

And Freya, sweet kitty - is launched abruptly into the sky, where she instinctively spreads her soft owl-like wings to steady herself as she comes to rest on Athena’s shoulders once again.

Together, the pair peer down at earth.

Faces side by side.

No.

Something has happened.

What has happened?

They’ve watched the cataclysm.

A dark cloud crosses the sky. A tremor shakes across the globe.

There is no where safe and no one immune to this tragedy that is rapidly unfolding.

It’s as if, with one snap of their fingers, someone has turned out the planet’s light.

Everywhere is touched, everywhere is tampered with, everywhere is changed.

Instantly.

Now - from this one small, brief, infinitesimally small moment in time!! - we live with polarity.

Now,

before - only light

after - the light and the dark together, seeking towards balance.

(why??? Why go from that to this?? because … we came here to experience ALL of life’s fullness. All of it. And you can’t have that without the other. No one with out another. The whole purpose of it all is separation. So we separate. we feel it all.)

Now,

For every piece of light darkness.

For every shred of love hate.

For every bit of joy, or freedom, peace - despair, force, conflict.

Now, we have to balance out the forces.

Balance.

And Athena?

She cannot stand to watch. She cannot just sit and watch.

So she does exactly what she’s not supposed to do.

She sends help.

(she’s not supposed to help. the gods are not meant to interfere with the lives of mortals. our own drama is our own to act out, it is our responsibility, and ours alone…but never has there ever been a god who can truly, truly resist stepping in when they are needed. when their heart-strings are pulled just so. And obviously, Athena’s heart strings have been pulled just so.)

She acts fast.

Here, on this grassy hill, looking down over earth, where a great shadow has settled in, millions of eons of lightyears away - she kneels in front of Freya!! Sweet Freya!!! Her darling companion! Her favourite nap-time partner!! With the softest fur on any living creature you can possibly, possibly imagine.

Athena gives her one simple directive, help them.

And Freya (being Athen’s favourite feline pet and all, shares the very same embodiment of wisdom and strength as her darling master) heeds her call, she springs to action!! She butts her face gently against Athena’s chest one last time, a soft purr with an ever softer goodbye, she knows it’s forever (but what’s forever when you are a god, or even the pet of one??) and what a heartbreaking gift to be given - a true service in the name of the one you love.

Help them, Athena asks.

So Freya flies.

Freya darts across the sky, it is a long ways to go (the longest!) but she does not tire. She does not waver. Wings soaring with the speed of a thousand Zeus’ chariots, fed by the fire of purpose, and guided by Love. Paws pointed gently in the direction she’s aiming towards, ears lowered with fierce determination. Oh never have we ever seen a cat so hell-bent on one singular purpose! Go Freya, go!!!!!!!

She flies.

She flies.

She flies.

…but she does not fly fast enough.

(it was never going to be fast enough.)

She reaches the stargate to enter earth just a few minutes too late. She never could have made it. She was never going to make it. But she had to at least try.

She’s too late.

Her paws bounce against the sealed-shut stargate. The portal through which all new energies must pass as they enter earth. It is closed. What should be a thin membrane to cross has become a solid wall of pale crystal pink - rock hard, and totally unforgiving.

(We know, she tries.)

Freya bounces her paws off the stargate again. Again. Again.

She tries.

It is no use.

She cannot enter.

She cannot enter.

She cannot help.

(poor freya. not that she will accept our pity. she has a job to do, and she will see it through. let’s keep going with our story.)

What she didn’t know, what we didn’t know then - was that this stargate was only shut to POSITIVE energies. That’s why it’s pink. That’s why the sealed portal door is PINK. Negative energy can still get through.

But positive energy - the kind of positive energy that was sent here with Athena’s Love? That can’t enter.

Only negative energy can get though this sealed & shut stargate.

And here’s the kicker.

All of that newly polarised energy on earth?

It’s supposed to be in balance.

We’re supposed to be equally in balance - every force has to have an equal force!!!! This is how it is supposed to work!! It’s meant to be in perfect balance.

But it’s not.

It’s fucking NOT.

The energy on earth is supposed to be fucking balanced and it’s fucking NOT. Because someone, some time ago, decided - they DECIDED - THEY could control the energy. This was chosen. They let only negative energy in, instead.

There is no balance here.

And here’s the kicker of the kicker of the shittiest reality of what it means to be HUMAN.

There is no “they.”

There is no they.

They didn’t decide.

We did.

We decided.

We decided, long ago, that ignoring our feelings was easier than feeling them.

Our light was too powerful for us to hold.

So we gave it away.

(ouch.)

We decided, long ago, to ignore our feelings (they sure took up a heck-tonne of time!) and in doing so, declared ourselves enemies against our very own light.

well… shiiiitttt.

And so it happened.

No one did it to us.

No malicious or maleficent force, being, or entity swooped in to rob us of our energy.

We DECIDED, we chose to ignore our feelings.

We did it to ourselves.

We chose this.

And we closed the stargate.

Freya made it here too late (she was always going to make it here too late. this is our drama to live out, down here on earth.)

And for centuries - for actual eons of time - Freya has sat just outside of our stargate, waiting just waiting to come in and be of service.

She made a promise. And she tends to see it out.

First she sits alone. (my heart breaks for her! not that she minds - she has the calm indifference of a feline and the quiet presence of an owl, and she is driven with sole purpose by Athena’s love. She does not mind waiting alone.)

She was always going to wait.

And then, the dragons came.

One by one.

Ten by ten.

Thousand by thousand.

The dragons came.

They didn’t know to come, It wasn’t necessaryily in their timeline - they would have happily spent their lifetimes pursuing other goals in other worlds. But the negative energy building and building behind that closed stargate became a beacon for them.

The dragons came.

Freya’s no longer alone.

And for centuries, for lifetimes, for millenia… the stargate stays closed, and they wait.

The stargate stays closed.

Until it doesn’t.

Until it opens.

The stargate opens.

Without fanfare.

Without really much of a preamble at all.

The stargate opens.

We open it.

let it be easy.

And the dragons walk in.
At first, they come one by one, following Freya’s lead.

It’s a calm sort of parade.

...Until it isn’t.

There are far too many, and as they enter, they slowly pick up speed - there is a dragon deluge!! The air is FILLED with dragons!! Above a house in Indiana, the dragons have a dragon party.

They are beautiful!! They are crystalline beings and they come in every colour of the rainbow!! My god, they are stunning.

In Bali, a woman sits on her lounge room floor and she cries and cries and cries.

In the heavens, a goddess sits in the grass and she cries and cries and cries.

It’s the most beautiful and true thing I’ve ever seen.

We did it.

The dragons enter.

…but what about Freya?

Freya!!

Oh sweet Freya!!!!

✧ ✧ ✧

So now, here in this present day, human life - I sit here in this cafe, holding the hand of my dear friend Knikki.

The two of us first met a few years ago at a sacred sexuality retreat in Costa Rica…. 100 women and gender-expansive beings experiencing their sacred orgasmic bliss in the jungle perched above the sea… and neither of us can quite believe that she has ended up HERE! in BALI! visiting me!!!

oh life, what even do you do to us??!!

Ever since she arrived, Knikki has been hanging out to be paired with her dragon! But life kept on lifing and getting in the way. (mostly me - mostly my life. I have carved out time to write my second book, and life keeps taking me by the hand with beautifully timed distractions intended to help me embrace life fully. I follow the call. Everything is perfect.)

It does mean, however - that Knikki is trying very hard to be patient. And now, this morning, after a beautiful stroll through the rice paddies and exchanging morning greeting with the local farmers, we get to the cafe, and she says to me, very sweetly “I’ll just sit here…. incase, just incase, you know… a dragon might want to come visit me…”

Ha!!!! How sweet this moment is. And quite abruptly, it turned quite profound! So please forgive me for wanting to etch each and every moment into my conscious memory!

So here we are - holding hands in the cafe, through what I THOUGHT was just another average dragon pairing!! (I’ve paired 51 dragons by now, and while the process itself obviously isn’t average… there tends to be a rhythm and a cadence to them, so that I usually know what to expect….)

But here, sitting here with Knikki, it takes almost no time at all to recognise… well holy crappola…. this isn’t normal.

Something profound is happening here.

First, someone else’s dragon appears well… that can’t be right..

But I trust the dragons! By now I trust the process. And I simply sit and wait, I do not force and I do not rush. If something dones’t appear right usually I just sit and wait for the truth to reveal itself. (it always does)

And slowly… slowly.. slowly.. sure enough! A different dragon appears. Only it’s not a dragon… I feel it tiptoeing gently across the earth, on silent paws. Paws…? Slowly… slowly… a cat begins to appear. Her legs, her body, her sweet face… her wings…??

And eventually, the whole story starts to unfold as I relay it all to Knikki. Piece by piece. I witness Athena walk towards us, feeling the knowing drop into my being, the way it does - oh, this is Athena!

And this moment, this moment is quite special to me.

I hadn’t ever seen the story from the other side of the sealed star gate before.

I KNOW it was shut. I KNOW the dragons couldn’t get in.

I never contemplated that they were waiting. It never occurred to me that there were thousands of celestial beings just waiting to come into earth to help us.

Does that not just make you feel so loved?? How could that NOT make you feel just so very LOVED?!!

I KNOW we needed to leave someone behind to guard the stargate.

You see - it’s been open to negative energy ONLY for the past several millenia. And that means unequivocally that there is an uneven balance of positive/negative energy here on earth.

We shut out the positive energy, and only allowed negative energy in (oopsies.)

So now, we’ve taken back control, and we’ve put a guard in place to make sure it stays in tune with positive energy only.

(sidenote: this means, that from here on out, the tide will start shifting. From this point forward, all of the work we’re doing to restore balance will start working. We’ll achieve balance now. We might still have to work for it, but - as the dragons say - let it be easy. It’s coming.)

And we needed a guard to stay in place and make sure it stays that way.

But I didn’t know that was going to have to be Freya!

Freya!!

The darling sweetheart who used to lie on Athena’s back and nap peacefully as the goddess looked down upon us.

Freya!!

This guardian angel who flew like a rocket to try to make it here in time to warn us stop wait you’re making a mistake… but who simply couldn’t make it.

Freya!!

So I sit here, holding Knikki’s hand.

And I have to tell her, with tears falling from my chin and making my voice come slow and thick, “I’m so sorry, I know what’s coming. And I’m so sorry.”

“… you don’t get a dragon guide like everyone else ... “

We need someone to guard the stargate.

And Freya… she walked through first.

She guarded the portal to make sure all of the dragons entered in safely.

Help them, Athena urged.

So she will.

She did and she does and she will continue to do so.

She has put herself in position.
She follows the call.

And now, Athena’s cat - darling Freya! she really is the softest feline in all of creation! - sits in a cavern at the bottom of the world, guarding the stargate for us.

Eventually… eventually, we’ll have to relinquish control and let balance reign. Eventually… eventually… negative energy will have to come back in along with the positive energy. We strive for balance. But not quite yet. Not yet. We’ve got some work to do first.

“Knikki,” I say, “as a favour… can you.. can you visit her? She’s all alone. And she doesn’t mind - truly she doesn’t! But I see every now and then… I see fear cross her face.”

So this is the story of Athena’s Cat, her incredible sacrifice,

and my friend Knikki, who’s going to visit her for us.

thank you.

🤍🐉✨

hi! if you’re new here, my name is Cara West - I’ve recently been connected to a brand new breed of dragons, sent here to earth to help us shift ourselves out of the false reality of negative energy we’ve gotten stuck in. I travel the world (through meditation!) with with dragons fulfilling my work - and I’m pairing people with dragons as their own type of spirit guide, too. It’s new and exciting and is a gift that I am incredibly, incredibly grateful for. I’ll share more here as it evolves. It’s all really quite new still :) xx Cara