Caddywampus
Inspired by ghost stories
Every month the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) group here in Montana meets on zoom to make art and stories together. Every month, Megan Emmot comes up with a brilliant prompt for us to work with. This month the prompt was “It all started in the mountains...” Which to me sounded like the start of something spooky and mysterious. So I started by thinking of all the things that could start in the mountain like mines, rock slides, and forest fires. I thought about all the different mountain ranges I know about. I grew up along the spine of the Rocky Mountains which I have always loved but when I think of spooky, my mind goes to the South. So I decided to focus back on my point of origin: Tennessee and The Smoky Mountains. I started looking up ghost stories and cryptid tales of the region and I stumbled upon the tale of The Wampus Cat.
A video about the process:
(or you can continue reading below)
The Tale of the Wampus Cat
The Wampus Cat seems to have originated from a Cherokee story about a young woman who was transformed into a cougar like creature. There are two versions of the tale that I was able to find.
In the first, the woman is curious about the hunting ceremonies that the men partake in. So she hides herself beneath a mountain lion pelt and sneaks to the place where they hold the ceremony. But the medicine man who held the ceremony spots her and places a spell on her. She is transformed into a half woman, half cougar for the rest of her life.
In the second version, which seems closer to the true source as far as I can tell, is about the Spirit of Madness, called Ew’ah who terrorized the village of Etowah, which is located in modern day North Carolina. Ew’ah would cause men to lose their minds as soon as they locked eyes with it. So the village people came together and asked their strongest, fastest, most clever warrior, Standing Bear, to fight Ew’ah. Standing Bear did not hesitate, though his wife Running Deer felt terrible fear for him. Running Deer waited for days for Standing Bear to return. When he did, he was not the same man. He had been driven mad.
Running Deer went to the Shaman and asked to wear the booger mask- the face of a bobcat - to enact her revenge against the demon who had stolen the love of her life from her. The Shaman told her that the spirit of the bobcat could defeat the demon, but that she must surprise Ew’ah first. When the demon saw the bobcat face, it would be driven mad itself.
Running Deer entered the forest, moving as softly as she could, looking for footprints. For days she wandered, eating berries to keep up her strength. Finally, she noticed strange marks in the soft ground. She crept forward to a stream. She followed the stream to the source and found a terrible hulking creature leaning out over the water for a drink. She gathered her courage- the courage of the bobcat- and leapt upon the demon.
The demon spun, and seeing the face of the bobcat, it began to tear at itself, falling into the water. Running Deer spun around and ran home, never once looking back. It is said her spirit protects the area in the form of a cat creature.
Up until the 1960s there were reports around the area of a large cat like creature with glowing eyes walking around on its’ hind legs, scaring farmers and devouring livestock. Were these simple mountain cats that people were seeing, or something else?
Catawampus
Scouring the internet, I kept finding that the word “Catawampus” seems to have been brought from Scotland to the Appalachians where it took on the meaning of something “set askew or on the diagonal.” Somewhere along the line the syllables seemed to have switched places, bringing us the Wampus Cat.
Inspiration Strikes
These stories tickled my brain and got me excited to paint. I imagined the rough outline for a story about a girl (named Caddy?) with something of a troubled past, sent to live with a relative, perhaps in the woods of North Carolina. Maybe she uncovers a secret inheritance through her bloodline, or maybe she stumbles across an old curse. Either way, she finds transformation and discovers a way to straighten out her Catawampus life.
Difficulties in the Process
I got caught in a spiral of indecision while I was working on this. This is something that happens for every project I start. (I think I am hot on the trail of WHY this happens. I will be writing about this in a later newsletter, once I get the pieces glued together.)
Something I am really trying to focus on lately is having a clear process to achieving the final result. The more I eliminate the guess work at the beginning, the faster the final painting comes together.
The idea was pretty easy to come up with- it was just waiting there for me to pluck it up. (In fact, it was so easy to come up with that I am not totally convinced I haven’t seen this somewhere before and I just subconsciously copied it. If you see a similar bit of art- let me know- gotta keep myself in check!) The drawing was a smooth process without a lot of agonizing. But when I got to the color stage, I hit a wall. I just couldn’t decide the color combination that would work! I tend to like to stick to the same three colors- green, red, and yellow but I wanted a night scene with lots of mystery. I knew I needed a warm/ cool contrast to make the character come forward but for some reason, when I was working digitally the blue/purple/pink color combo just looked terrible to me.
(I think I was probably in a mental funk when I was trying to choose colors. Is this something every creator goes through, or is it just me? If you go through this in your process, let me know. I want to investigate it for future newsletters and get inside this problem to figure it out.)
Part of the difficulty is that I was trying to slapdash my colors on so I could move to the next stage. But rushing just causes me to jam up at whatever stage I’m at. The lesson I need to tattoo onto my arm is: “DON’T RUSH: THINGS TAKE THE TIME THEY TAKE!”
Once I took a step back (after having a bit of a pout for a day) I decided to ease myself into the painting by starting with a blue-green color for the background. I slowly edged it away from green into blue and from blue to purple and from THERE I was able to start cooking!
Sometimes you have to go through a side door to get the result you want! There were other troublesome spots throughout, like where I thought I had ruined the face for a while, but with perseverance I was able to finish the dang thing and call it done!
The thing that keeps pulling me back into creating is this wild roller coaster of a process. There are so many lows and so many highs and each creative project has a rhythm of its own.
If you are a fellow creator, I’d love to know how you relate to your creative process. What parts do you love? What parts do you hate? How do you stick with it through the sticky parts to get to the good parts again? For me, the love of the idea sees me through those choppy waters. I want to make the thing in my head come alive. It never is quite the wonderfully polished thing in my mind, but it is interesting to see how my skills have developed up to this point to bring this thing out of the inner turmoil of my brain onto paper. There is an itch that accompanies each piece where I can see just where I fell short and I want to see if I can best myself in the next one and solve those creative problems. Each piece is just slightly catawampus, just like life.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please leave me a comment and share this with someone who might also enjoy it!
I’m not an artist, but as a writer, I do have mental funks—so I think it’s somewhat normal. What an interesting process! Thanks for sharing the ins & outs.