Submitted by an anonymous reader. As with all legends, take with your own preferred level of grains of salt. And of course, if you have anything to add, or can share local legends and stories you have heard, please do.
The Last Lady of the Cats

This is a personal story, including some author speculation, based on encounters with one of Ojai’s not-so-atypical, possibly mystical beings…
Ojai has talking cats. English-speaking, talking cats.
But today, there’s only one Ojaian left who can hear them properly.
And she’s not talking.

I first encountered this person some years back when I was walking alongside the river bottom, thinking about whether a shortcut through that orange grove below Rice Canyon might take me over the river at an appealing spot. I was cutting through this grove when suddenly, there, just ahead of me, sitting on the ground beneath a tree, is this elderly lady, quite well-dressed, sitting with a big black and white tabby in her lap, having a conversation with it. I come up and ask her if I can get through by going straight ahead.
She looks at the cat, looks at me and says: “Ask my cat. He knows.” So I asked the cat. And I’ll be damned if the cat doesn’t lean over to her and seem to whisper something in her ear.
“So?” I say, after an appropriately long while.
“He told me. But he doesn’t want to talk to you,” she says. And she clams up.
Well, fine. So I walked on and had a lovely hike as always in Ojai.

Not too long after that, I was on my bike riding through the Arbolada, and thinking about whether to shoot one of those very tempting driveways into the hills behind. I came up to the beginning of two driveways. And there is that same lady sitting on the side of the road. Again, her dress is elegant, if somewhat old-fashioned. This time there is this large brown fluffy cat sitting next to her. They’re just sitting. It was a hot day. I stopped and asked her if she knew whether either of the two driveways in front of me went through.
She turned to the cat, and they start talking in a whisper that I could almost catch, but not quite. Then she looks back at me, and says, of course they go through. “Right up the mountain.”
So, I rode right on up the driveway, practically to the front door of the house, at which point I could see the fence in the backyard behind.
Conclusion: It goes right through if you are a cat. I had to turn around though.
When I rode back out, both the elderly lady and the cat were gone.

So here’s what I know. Ojai has talking cats. I surmise they might speak English, since that is what the lady seems to speak. They are very good at giving directions if they want to be, so long as you are looking for cat directions. Other than that, I just can’t say. And the lady isn’t talking.

But I’ve asked around about this curious lady, and it turns out I am not the only one who has seen her, always in the same circumstance, sitting in some random spot talking with a cat just where you need to ask directions.
In Ojai, there is always a back story. And so it turns out that this lady apparently matches the description of a woman who was a local fixture for decades, and was once a notable artist in the bohemian Ojai of the thirties and forties, back when Ojai was a center of philosophical and spiritual and artistic movements that were changing the way interesting people thought all around the world. This lady was a member of one branch of one such group, who believed that all living things are one, and could communicate together and with each other, if only they would take the time to learn each others’ languages. The story has it that this group began teaching some local cats English and learning some catspeak. And the story says that they succeeded with a particular group of local cats. They apparently used to have some wild times at their salons, cats and humans hanging out on couches and on the floor sharing their thoughts about the universe.

So, according to this story, a number of cats have kept the gift all these decades. But as is too often the case with humans, the cat-speaking bohemians of Ojai gradually split up and went off their separate ways in this world and the next, taking their gift with them. And after decades, there was just one lady left from that group here in Ojai. She’s the one you see periodically, talking with these cats, in these random spots around the valley.

Here’s the very curious thing, though: These folks who remember her insist this woman actually passed on years ago.
So what is she doing here today, still in random spots, talking with cats and giving directions?
Now this made me think of stories I have heard in other places around the world.  Just like cultures all over the world have a flood story, just like cultures all over the world have a mystical spirit of mischief who pokes fun and makes trouble in their community, all over the world communities have mystical spirits who guide travelers. Here in the U.S. and other “first world” countries, we have largely gotten rid of these spirits with all our street names and house numbers and maps and GPS devices. But in many parts of the world, there still are no real street names, or house numbers. In these places, the only real way you arrive at your intended destination is with the help of the directions-spirit, that seemingly lonely-looking person who happens to be standing right there in the middle of nowhere just when you are on the verge of becoming hopelessly lost, ready to point you in the right direction.

Thinking about that, I have come to believe this elderly, elegantly-dressed lady is the directions-spirit of Ojai, our mystical signpost if you will. When time came to pass on, she didn’t want to leave our bucolic little valley and her good friends among the cats. And so she applied for the open position of directions-spirit, and got the job.
Being more interested in talking with her friends among the cats than giving directions, she has largely deferred that job to her friends. And so, of course, her directions cannot be trusted, since they come from cats. Cats have a different way of going somewhere and anyway, won’t necessarily want to tell some random human the right way to go.
Luckily Ojai isn’t very big, and you usually get where you are going anyway.

Tagged as: ojai myths