The Cat gets mutable (and, frankly, saucy!) in this special episode with our very own Kaaron Warren. While Aaron goes to a disastrous small-town hypnotism show and Kaaron reaches for the white-out, Joseph opens a black magic door that should have been kept well closed. Rewriting the past is discussed, and our changing perspectives on our own past. Also the vanishment of old haunts, and nostalgia – or its lack. The random scraps of things we scribble on when needs must. Writing vs typing. The addictive machinery of writing on a phone. Aaron invests in a woodchipper. Joseph goes home for sad reasons. Kaaron discovers a bizarre corner and a magic space.

Flipperts and gibbets discussed in this show include:

• Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckenridge
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
• Brett Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero
• American Graffiti
• Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth
• Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory
• Call-back to the infamous wet string episode

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.

The Cat gets performative in a barnstorming episode from the town of Beechworth, with a sensational special guest: actor, freeformer, poet and Bram Stoker Award nominated author, the preternatural Kyla Lee Ward. While Kaaron paces the women’s ward of the asylum and Aaron loses his voice to Bon Jovi, Joseph mansplains a cat into a pigeon. Kyla immerses herself in phantasmal spaces. Voices are discussed, and accents, intonation and word choice. Feeling a character in the throat. The slippery strangeness of the voice. Also working your way into a character from the outside versus working your way out from within. Rebecca is revisited, as is Kaaron’s ‘hambone effect.’ Mimicry as a stepping stone, the formation, fluidity or calcification of the self. The masks we all wear, and other matters of a deep and divers nature.

Pretexts and semblances spoken of in this episode include:

• AsylumFest 2023
• Bloodsongs magazine
• Richard Adams’ Watership Down
• Robyn Cadwallader’s The Anchoress
• Stanislavski’s ‘Method’
• Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca
• Kyla’s novella The Final Masque

Photos courtesy of the incontestable Cat Sparks. See more of her AsylumFest 2023 snaps here.

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.

The Cat gets spooky and kooky with a very special guest: author, screenwriter, living encyclopedia of all things Halloween, the one and only, the delightful, Lisa Morton. While Aaron dreams of Hal Bodner, and Kaaron writes about four hairdressers, Joseph drinks whisky, eats haggis, and invokes the spirit of the dead Rabbie Burns. Lisa brings a totem. Curses are discussed, and cursed objects, with an aside concerning the online cursed doll market. Also ritual as a language, the foundations of comedy, and the sadness of dead shopping malls. That terrible moment you realise you’re part of a folk horror ritual you didn’t consent to. Kaaron remembers Marilyn Monroe’s grave. Aaron discovers a cursed cabinet. Joseph hurls his body out into the void. Lisa finds her old teacher’s book. Everyone wonders about dread mechanisms.

Snips and snails mentioned in this episode include:

• Lisa Morton’s Life On The Edge (1988)
• The origins of Burns Night
• Donna Tartt’s The Secret History
• Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.

The Cat gets cosy in the cubby house with special guest, author of All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, Castle Full of Blackbirds, and more – so much more! – Angela Slatter. While Joseph reads another bogus biography and Aaron holds in a sneeze, Kaaron is delighted by a biscuit tin. Angela revisits the traumatising books of childhood. Solipsism is discussed, as is Nabokov’s dream Russia, and the USA of his imagination. Places of the imagination with no real-world existence. The idealisation of a place that becomes more real than the place itself. A toothless man is the telling detail. Not to mention, all the reasons why children should – nay, must! – be traumatised with dark tales. Aaron and Angela resurrect the ghost of Myrtle. Joseph makes a misguided commitment. Kaaron loses a ham bone.

Note: The story Joseph is thinking of is in fact The Happy Prince, which is a fairy tale written by Oscar Wilde – not Hans Christian Andersen at all.

Grimaces and grimoires referenced in this episode include:

• Lila Azam Zanganeh’s The Enchanter
• Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
• Angela Slatter’s Flight
• Struwwelpeter
• Encarta ’95

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.

The Cat gets titular in the first episode of a brand new season, with special guest Jason Nahrung, Australia's number one vampire and author of Blood and Dust and The Big Smoke. While Kaaron takes a creepy clown as her plus one and Aaron gets unwholesomely into napkins, Joseph gets a lift with a stranger to knifey-town. Jason shares his abiding love of New Orleans, and everybody learns about the life of pirate Jean Lafitte. Titles are discussed: titles from nowhere; titles by consortium; titles as a story's guiding light. The comfort of titles on a bookshelf. The dangers of writing as a tourist. Everyone agrees you shouldn't be a wanker. Kaaron and Aaron fall out over Love Story. Jason wonders where you got dem shoes. Joseph gets into jazz—wankily. Everyone agrees on the Bloody Mary.

Po-boys and beignets from this episode include:

• Harlan Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream
• Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea
• Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange
• Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs
• Spoon's Lafitte Don't Fail Me Now and The Agony of Lafitte

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.

The Cat gets confessional in this last episode of Season 2, with the triumphant return of star special guest... Aaron Dries. While Kaaron looks beneath the surface and Joseph makes a snap judgment, Aaron touches his face thirty-two times. (Lah-de-dah!) Observations about strangers lead to an insight. Translation of quirks leads to obfuscation leads to ideas. Anxiety is processed into art. Also, Rebecca... again. The telling detail. The craft of observational comedy. Readers and the catalogue of reality. Aaron brings a bag of mystery. Kaaron and Joseph get literal chills.

Imponderables and consumables in this episode include:

• Emmanuel Carrère's I Am Alive and You Are Dead
• Terence Mallick's Badlands
• Kaaron Warren's Slights
• Aaron Dries's House of Sighs and Damage Inc.
• J. Ashley-Smith's The Attic Tragedy

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.

The Cat gets chimerical and discourses upon dreams with special guest Paul Mannering, award-winning author of the Drakeforth and Tankbread series, among many other fine stories. While Kaaron revisits some old dreams and Joseph gets obsessive, Aaron is scuttled sudsily by Shrek in his first Turkish bath. Paul puts his hand up for the teacher. Dreams are discussed, as is David Lynch, and that movie from the nineties where Steve Buscemi calls for more dwarves (only he doesn't – about which, more below). The potency of first images. Capturing the weirdness and emotional weight of those images, while ensuring they make sense in this world. "It's wearing your face!" Joseph, Kaaron and Paul appear in Aaron's nightmares. Paul heals himself with a lucid dream. Aaron performs a (classic) Driesian wrap-up.

Figments and follies from this episode include:

• Joseph's story The Attic Tragedy
• David Lynch's actual story about the origins of the Red Room (in the opening paras of  this article)
• 'That movie with Steve Buscemi' is, of course, Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion, and the line is "Oh! Make it weird: put a dwarf in it!" excellently delivered by Peter Dinklage in this (extended) scene.

Don't forget to check out the episode page for more pics and bits!

The Cat gets intangible, discussing liminal spaces with special guest Sarah Read, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Bone Weaver's Orchard and Out of Water. While Joseph clambers through the brambles behind an old tyre yard, and Kaaron applies to be writer in residence at an all-night pub, Aaron looks up to find himself alone in a doctor's surgery waiting room. Sarah receives a warning from an empty room and unboxes a 200-year old bear pelt. Spaces are discussed, also places, and whether or not people or events leave a residue of energy in them. Also flower sack dresses, abandoned coal towns, and the eternal smouldering beneath the ground at Centralia. Aaron finds a pigeon in the ball pit. Everyone Frankensteins their locations.

Uncanny valleys and other in-betweens whispered in this episode include:

• Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House
• John Hughes's The Breakfast Club
• Sarah Read's The Hope Chest

Check out the episode page for more pics and bits.