Re-reading "The Book of Night With Moon"

[Lazy Leopard]

Having finished reading The Big Meow I had a few things from earlier books I wanted to check back on. It's been quite a while since I read The Book of Night With Moon, so I've picked it up again. It was the very first of Diane's books I read, before even So You Want To Be A Wizard, and, consequently, there are some things that now make a bit more sense to me than they likely did the first time through. Of course, there are other things I'm now wondering, and the first is this:

As cats have nine lives, and seem to carry at least some knowledge from one to the next, I wonder how much wizardry cats carry from life to life. Do they have an Ordeal in each of their wizardly lives, or just in the first wizardly one, and iif they're a wizard in one are they inevitably a wizard in the next.

(Answers may, of course, be found in later books, and I've read all three so it won't bother me, but it's probably polite to spoiler-protect anything particularly revelatory in case someone reading TBONWM for the first time wanders through.)

[mythbusterfan]

well, from the look of it I would theorize that wizardly talent is passed from life to life from the first one, cause if memories are, i would assume the memory of taking the Oath would hold over...well, now on second though, i dunno how wizardry would work if they grow up starting as kittens again. maybe each life holds a mini ordeal or just a re-affirmation of the Oath from life to life

[Lazy Leopard]

...and, of course, as these things go, there's a partial answer just a few pages further in. Cats do carry at least some memories from life to life. I'm still not sure how much Wizardry will follow, but if a cat remembered being a wizard in a previous life then it seems likely that it would...

More if I find it.

[Lazy Leopard]

It does seem that "the youngest are most powerful" applies, and at least a part of that is because "they don't know what's impossible". If cats carry memories from life to life then it figures cat wizards are likely to be most powerful the first time they're offered wizardry. However, there are also hints that cats go through an Ordeal in every wizardly life, so there must be a limit as to the detail in the memories which means they don't retain te deep knowledge a wizard would need, and they have to learn it again. I guess, having been a wizard in a previous life, they might be more likely to be offered the choice, or at least to seek it, in the next? More to puzzle over, I guess...

[SpacePen]

going from life to life

yes but... isn't there an instance where the main cat-wizard (Rhiow?) loses a life and just "goes on" to the next one without any kind of re-birth or loss of memory or even blacking out - as if having 9 lives means being invincible 8 times (where you would have died if you had only one life) and only actually dying the 9th time.

Or maybe that's because it was a wizardry-involved 9th life?

Also, doesn't a whole subplot in To Visit The Queen revolve around a cat who remembers being killed (unintentionally) by her brother as a kitten?

[Lazy Leopard]

There was a special wizardry for which Rhiow paid a whole life, but that was just the wizardry's price; she'll run out of normal feline lives after life number 8 rather than life number 9.

....and yes, Sif'ah remembers being drowned (when she was just Sif) because Arhu pushed her under in his attempt to survive, so cats clearly carry some memories from life to life. It's a puzzle...