I reached out to Cat after seeing her here on Instagram because she was posting some stuff I was aligned with, and her handle is cool as hell, @sciencewitchery We met The Bull where I found her chatting with Jacob, the owner of The Bull and her former middle school counselor. They were talking politics and Jacob had some good ideas about trying to bring people together.

As I arrived, storm clouds were rolling in, with that I already knew I was going to have problems with taking photos indoors. Being at The Bull while its raining outside, having a conversation in dim light, it does satisfy part of the soul though.

Cat is born and raised here in Gainesville. While she did leave for a few years, she eventually found her way back. When I asked her what brought her back, she told me about the curse of General Gaines. He is credited with starting the Seminole conflicts in 1817 by forcing them off their land, and when they refused, he burned their cabins and crops. So far this is factual, but Cat told me the folklore goes on to say that a Chief cursed the land declaring, “For every drop of native blood spilled here, white blood shall be bound to this soil.” So Cat might have returned to Florida to be near her sister, or due to a 200-year-old curse. We might never know.

Cat is a woman who has been around the US, growing up in Gainesville, eventually leaving to go to DC where she worked at the Smithsonian Zoo doing Ape research. Eventually, she moved to Portland, where a combination of her love of food and an opportunity led to her opening a breakfast and lunch Café called “Isal’s Garden Café”. Eventually, she sold it and moved back to Gainesville, where she has been a high school science teacher fighting the good fight for the past 11 years.

One of the things that drew me to reaching out to Cat was the second part of her name “wichery”. As someone who has a bit more than a passing interest in the occult it spoke to me. When talking to her I found out it wasn’t just a name, but she felt the same way. Cat told me that she has been into the occult since childhood, but is a science thinker. She hypothesizes that we are all part of a collective consciousness. Her personal spirituality is personally driven, not externally taught, and she finds that the occult and science do actually cohabitate. A quote from Arthur C. Clarke “Magic’s just science we don’t understand yet.”

As I said before, heading into The Bull the storm clouds were rolling in. I attempted to take some photos while there, but I knew it was a lost cause. Cat was gracious enough to meet with me again at One Love so I could take some photos with some daylight out. She was also gracious enough to bring her tarot cards with her. She brought two decks, her old Rider-Waite deck and a new deck that was raven-themed which was gifted to her. As she was doing my reading we talked, I told her about a youtube video I remembered watching that made tarot readings “make sense” for me. I had always thought it was about reading the future, what I learned from that video is its more about changing your frame of reference. We all have patterns of thinking. The reading should give you a new perspective on a subject. Its not telling you what is going to happen or if something is good or bad, but letting you add new thought patterns.