The cougar works a powerful magic on the human imagination. Perhaps it is envy. This majestic feline personifies strength, movement, grace, stealth, independence, and the wilderness spirit. It wanders enormous tracts of American wilderness at will. It is equally at home in forest, desert, jungle, or swamp. An adult cougar can bring down a full-grown mule deer in seconds. It yields to few creatures, save, bears and humans. (Mountain Lion Foundation)
Now take a look at one of the descriptions of Missy from Missy the Werecat. Missy has just come back from the wild, rescued a family and is thought to have been kept a prisoner for two years:
She moved with a smooth grace but also exuded strength and power, somehow giving an impression of greatness in spite of her only being a teenage girl. …
entering the room in full command of herself, alert and aware. Fearless. With depths that could not be penetrated. This Missy was not at all a victim, in any way …
Pretty similar, don’t you think?
After Missy comes back down from the mountains, having learned to control her changes, she befriends a girl called Alice. Alice was being sexually abused by her step-father and Missy stepped in to stop it. Stepping in while Alice was still so young, in addition to giving Alice the support she needed, helped Alice work her way through the sexual abuse as much as possible.
During a period of my life I went through some sexual abuse periods myself. To have had a Missy in my life at that point would have made a great difference. However, the norm in such cases is to have them explained away or denied. It’s simply too difficult for non-pedophiles to think that there are people out there who get turned on by such things.
Throughout her whole story of Missy the Werecat, P.G. Allison was carefully open about the darker sides of life. At the same time she made sure we understood the importance of people like Missy in the lives of those being affected by predators. Sometimes it takes a predator to hunt down other predators and, as most of us come to know, not all predators are out to hurt people.
Missy the Werecat is very US in its style. It is definitely written for a younger audience. Some violence was explicit and some sexual content was also explicit, yet it was explicit in an age-appropriate manner. I was surprised by the balance between sexual and violent content as I am not used to that from US authors. To make up for that there were the standard moralistic teachings found in US stories. In the end that did not matter to me and I for one was glad that such a person/mountain lion blessed the lives of so many people (and frightened the ☠@✴# out of others).
humanitysdarkerside 