Demeter

Family: 
Pia [mother, alive and in London]
unknown [father, status/location unknown]
unknown [half-siblings on either side of her parentage, cousins, aunts, uncles, and other extended family - the only family that she knows is her mother]

Personality: Demeter is dual-natured, elusive, complex, and contradictory. On the one hand, she is versatile and energetic. On the other, she is two-faced and flighty. When she is good, she is very attractive to others. When she is bad, she is more the worse for being the natural charmer that she is. Almost childish in nature, she is lively, imaginative, and happy - if circumstances are right for her. If they are wrong, she can become egocentric and restless. She flits from interest to interest, relationship to relationship, as purposelessly as a butterfly dancing from flower to flower. To her, life is a game which always has to be full of freshness and continuous entertainment, free of labor and routine. She changes her mind at the drop of a hat, and sticking to a decision is near impossible for her.

She lacks the quality of conscientiousness, and is therefore apt to fight a losing battle in any attempts she makes to be moral. Her good qualities are attractive and come easily to her. She is affectionate, courteous, kind, generous, and thoughtful towards the poor and suffering - provided none of the activities resulting from these traits interferes too greatly with her own life and comfort. When striving towards her own ends, she will use any weapon in her armory - unscrupulous lying and cunning evasiveness; escaping blame by putting it on others, using all the charm she has at her disposal. If things go against her, she skulks childishly. In her better moments, she strives to be honest and straight-forward, but self-interest is almost always the victor.

Also like a child (or kitten, as you like), she demands attention and admiration, and for others to spend their time and energy on her. She reflects every change in her surroundings, like a chameleon, and can become pessimistic, sullen, peevish, and materialistically self-centered if circumstances force her to struggle in any way. If the conditions of life become really adverse, however, her versatility makes her very adaptable, adjusting herself to control the world around her by means of her inherent ingenuity and cleverness.

Demeter has a keen, intuitive, brilliant intelligence, and loves cerebral challenges. Her mental agility and energy gives her a voracious appetite for knowledge, though she dislikes the labor of learning. Her intellect is strongly analytical and gives her such a great ability to see both sides of a question that she finds it hard to make decisions.

In love, she is fickle, though not intentionally so. It is thanks to the basic inconsistency of her emotional nature, which at times has a rather amoral aspect to it. She can become deeply involved emotionally, while at the same time being hostile to sentimentality, standing back from the romantic situation and laughing at it and the 'players' in it, including herself. Indeed, she takes nothing seriously. So, as far as love is concerned, she is superficial, light-hearted, cool, and flirtatious, and unimaginative of the pain she may give others - in spite of her temporary depth of feeling, for the intensity of involvement lasts only while it is new. She likes intrigue, the excitement of the chase, but once she has caught her prey, she loses interest and looks around for the next creature to pursue.

In less serious situations, she is a witty, entertaining companion, a good acquaintance rather than friend. Even at her worst, she is never dull. There is playfulness below the surface, and she is a brilliant conversationalist - so long as her conversation partner remains wary and keeps her at a distance.

History: Life was a game to Demeter from the very start. She was born to a long-suffering single mother whose wily ways caught up to her in the form of a lively golden kitten. Her mother had no humans, leaving her to raise Demeter on her own and on the streets. Demeter learned early on how to use her attractiveness to gain her own ends. Her mother taught her that. The pair always had the nicest foods, the safest dens, and never wanted for anything. Demeter learned from watching her mother that a smile at the right time, or a flirtatious touch against the right tom, could open up doors that would be closed for any other cat.

Demeter carried that lesson with her as she entered teen-hood, and had a string of flings by the time she became of age, each delicately crafted to benefit her as needed long after she had ceased her flirtations. She found herself growing bored easily, as she was running out of new cats to toy with. As she entered her twenties, she began to hear whispers of the ginger tom who was heading a threatening gang in an abandoned warehouse in one of the darker corners of the city. Her interest was piqued instantly. What fun it could be to have such a powerful cat wrapped around her claw!

She moved to a den nearer to the warehouse, and began spending her time at the nearby haunts, hoping to catch the tom's eye and be granted an audience with him. Her wish was fulfilled sooner than she could have anticipated - Macavity approached her, and the two began an affair with an intensity she had never before experienced. It was easy to be who he wanted her to be. She found herself floored and intimidated by the reach of his power. Indeed, she was quickly overwhelmed by the intensity of his feeling toward her, and as the initial excitement of bedding such a tom wore off, she began to fear the situation she had put herself in.

So she tried to back out. She became reclusive, staying in her den when she could and acting sullenly and resistant whenever he managed to drag her out. She could not play games with him. His wit far outweighed her own, and the more she tried to pull away, the harder he held on. So she did the most sensible thing she could think of - she took flight in the night, without so much as a note to explain her actions. Of course, this did not go well for her. Macavity tracked her down within hours, and in his rage, locked her up so that she could not leave him again.

Demeter suffered through weeks, maybe months, of imprisonment. Macavity took from her what he wanted, and left her locked up and guarded whenever he had no use for her. Escape was not easy. The Henches had been instructed not to interfere with her or her imprisonment without direct order, so she could not charm her way out. Her only hope was the times Macavity had her taken to his rooms. She played the good prisoner as long as she had to in order to lull the Henches into a false sense of security whenever they escorted her. Eventually, they stopped dragging her, stopped holding onto her arms, until it was a simple matter of slipping away when their attention was diverted and running for her life.

The junkyard tribe was her safest option. She'd decided that long before her escape, and she knew where to go. It was not hard to play the victim once she arrived - she felt every inch a victim, traumatized and skittish as could be. After a very long stay in their healer's den, she was welcomed into the Jellicle tribe with open arms. The security of the Junkyard, with its gates and fences and patrols, was exactly what she needed to feel at ease and repair what Macavity had broken. She acquainted herself with the other Jellicles and incorporated herself rather seamlessly into their life.

She always kept them at arm's length, though, letting them form their own hypotheses on herself and her history. Eventually, she returned to life outside of the Junkyard, haunting her old haunts and reestablishing her old contacts. Her socializing within the Junkyard was always kept at a minimum. Most Jellicles liked to pry until they knew every detail there was to know, and she was not keen on informing them of the specifics of her relationship with Macavity. Truly, there are not many Jellicles who could say they know her well. If asked to describe her, they could state any number of mild personality traits, maybe give a very brief overview of her history, before giving up.

Unsurprisingly, after only a few years with the Jellicles, Demeter finds herself growing bored. The Junkyard is a perfectly suitable place to rest her head, but there is not much left to learn about the other cats, no adventures to be had within the fences. She is tired of the predictability, the bland kindness and the meaningless conversations. Her eyes are starting to turn toward brighter horizons.