Sgt. Howard wrote:... perhaps, and many units use a cat to that end- but Castela would certainly be unique as CREATED to such ends...
the Old Sgt.
Some thoughts about cats and fae:
{Magrat is a witch. Greebo is another witch's cat.}
A few more quotes about fae (well, "elves" in the book, but):
Some local girls have decided they're going to be witches, but they believe it's occult. And they're going to summon the Lords and Ladies, whom they believe are Wonderful. Granny and Nanny are the local REAL, badass witches, and Magrat Garlick is their somewhat hippie junior witch, fiancée of the King. (It's not a big country.)
“I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble."
"But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg.
"That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.”
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad
Granny Weatherwax confronts the Elf Queen:
You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.
Face to face with elves:
There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the color. There was no evil glint. But there was…
… a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.
“We only remembered that elves sang. But we forgot what they sang about.”
and one about Granny Weatherwax, at age eighteen or so:
But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she’s not beautiful. There’s a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there’s a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven’t yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out.
and one about cats, just for good measure:
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.
Gun, just saying
)
I expect that sort of logic would make more sense if I had actually ever read anything by Pratchett.
