Let The Cat In

In the first episode of a brand new season, the Cat gets synchronistic over the profundity of coincidence. While Joseph performs an experiment with time and Kaaron buys a 'decorative stack', Aaron confuses a French orgasm for a high-protein yoghurt. The centrality of coincidence is discussed – and why coincidence illuminates in life, but disappoints in fiction. Also, the excitement of hidden conne...

The Cat gets personal in this lo-fi, bargain-bucket, guest-free and long-overdue episode of supernatural occurrences and generational egotism. And when we say 'the Cat', we mean two Gen Xers and an elder Millennial; and when we say 'personal', we mean 'persona' (the 'l' is silent). While Kaaron lives in the moment and Aaron embraces his own mortality, Joseph flaps his Kermit hands and says the C-w...

The Cat gets spoilerific in search of all things Arthurian with special guest, legendary New York Times bestselling author and award-winning comic book writer, Dan Abnett. While Aaron shepherds a coming out and Kaaron is betrayed by a cheap trick, Joseph ruins Lunar Park for everybody. Dan goes to Glastonbury on a quest for the holy grail. Fictional truths are discussed, as is reality as a device,...

The Cat gets permissive in this latest episode with special guest, author and artist Nik Vincent-Abnett. While Joseph has an on-air fashion meltdown and Aaron DIYs his bootcuts into flares, Kaaron forgets her own name. Clothing is discussed, as an expression of character, as shorthand for a time, as a face to show the world, as skin. The cyclic nature of fashion. Each generation's possessiveness o...

The Cat goes positively bonkers over an audience with the best-dressed man in speculative fiction, game designer, teacher and writer, the incontrovertible Rik Lagarto . While Joseph gets all the ups and Aaron clobbers a Hobbit, Kaaron is haunted by a butterfly cake. The ghosts at Bethnal Green are discussed, as is ham (again), Nazis (fuck 'em), and Russell Crowe's piss. Also scar trees, scars in t...

The Cat gets 'poetic and foul-mouthed' in a bewitching episode with award-winning author and academic, the incantatory Lisa L. Hannett . While Kaaron gets a Lacroix and Joseph gets lost in the nineties, Aaron dodges the post-con blues by calling from the toilet. William Hope Hodgson is discussed, as is the gathering of disasters. An extended riff on the mixtape follows: the mixtape as a labour of...

That Cat gets compulsive in an out-there episode with multi-award-winning author and associate professor, the incontestable Helen Marshall . While Kaaron investigates an autograph book and Joseph discovers a horror show in the guinea pig hutch, Aaron goes fungal and transforms into the Moth Boy. Helen works through her fixation with children and death. The dark and light sides of creative obsessio...

The Cat gets fibrous and transformative over afternoon tea with artist, paper maker and raconteur extraordinaire, the delightful Katharine Nix. While Joseph has an esoteric moment after two cups of tea and Kaaron rejects the popularly held contrivances of narrative convention, Aaron drops the bolognese and lets in the brown-snakes. Ancient alchemical processes are discussed, as are parallel evolut...

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...

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 dis...

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...

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 Russi...

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...

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. ( L ah-de-dah ! ) Observations about strangers lead to an insight. Translation of quirks leads to obfuscation leads to ideas. Anxiety is processed into art. Als...

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...

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...

The Cat gets definitively morbid with special guest, multi-award-winning author and editor, the ever-unquiet Lee Murray . While Aaron obsesses over Elmore Leonard's first hundred pages and Joseph deconstructs the double-helical structure of DNA, Kaaron finds some postcards and investigates a death by shark. Lee loses her box of things and opens the door to an interactive mystery. Defining moments...

The Cat wrestles with long projects and what it means to be an artist with special guest, award-winning author, photographer, graphic designer and activist, Cat Sparks . While Joseph lets a novel die (again) and Aaron lets the wrong one in, Kaaron makes like Tweetie-Pie (or maybe some kind of crab). Cat takes a journey back to a time before helicopter parenting. Motivation is discussed, as is auth...

The Cat goes deep, DEEP into the illimitable expanses of negative space with special guest Nathan Ballingrud , incomparable author of The Strange , Wounds , and North American Lake Monsters . While Joseph gets nostalgic for Betamax and Aaron is thrown into existential crisis, Kaaron fills one minute's silence with entirely inappropriate thoughts. Nathan navigates a tightrope of what – and what not...

S02-25 AsylumFest 2022 The Cat gets unhinged at the second live recording from AsylumFest 2022, with special guests AJ Spedding , Kat Clay , and David Schembri . While Kaaron finds a book from the world's most haunted school, Aaron is haunted by a supernatural cow, and Joseph by the ghosts in crap plastic toys. (Yeah, thanks for nothing, Uncle Marty!) AJ brings a voodoo doll and makes a Black Beau...

The Cat gets festive with an off-the-rails Season's Greetings special, with laconic superstar guest, Kaaron's Christmas tree! While Kaaron gives everyone presents from her personal Ground Zero of weird objects, Aaron slouches toward Bethlehem and Joseph wemembers Gweat Bwitain and the Xmases of yore. Pizza trees are discussed, also cursed paintings, holly, ivy, prawns and suncream. Lobster shells...

The Cat goes on a road trip and sets a record with special guest, author , publisher , and haunted asylum owner , Geoff Brown. While Aaron makes like Ellen DeGeneres, and Joseph makes like Dr Phil, Kaaron makes like Ricki Lake and goes hitchhiking on a serial killer's patch. Geoff walks through a wardrobe into his own private Narnia. Dreams are (cheaply) analysed, impostor syndrome is discussed, a...

The Cat makes like The Wicker Man and gets ritualistic with special guest Kirstyn McDermott , award-winning author of Hard Places and the Never Afters novella series. While Kaaron builds a backyard pool and Aaron gets his steps in, Joseph ruins summertime Christmas for everyone. Kirstyn learns the steps to Venus and shares a brief history of statuary in Ballarat. Folk horror is discussed, also Whi...

The Cat goes on stage for our very first live show at this year's NatCon: Conflux 16. Special guests – drawn from the Hat of Mystery (a hotel conference glass with some hastily scribbled names folded up inside) – include CH Pearce , Emilie Morscheck , Claire Fitzpatrick , and Zachary Ashford . While Kaaron brings old movie posters for the edification of all and Joseph performs a viking funeral for...

The Cat reconnects with its purpose, turning trash into treasure with co-owner of Canberra's legendary Green Shed , Sandie Parkes. While Kaaron is haunted by an old woman in a knife and Joseph cashes in on his teenage son's emotional vulnerability, Aaron makes a robot out of paddle-pop sticks. Wet string is discussed, and doctors' waiting rooms. The history and mystery of objects, their journeys a...