The Birth of Beans and The Magic Sanctuary

Hello and welcome to The Sanctuary Chronicles!

I am your host Tiffany! I am a Life Coach, a Sanctuary owner (a beautiful property with my wife Kristina in NW Wisconsin with goats and alpaca that offers Goat and Pasture Yoga as well as holistic retreats for the body mind and spirit) and I am an author.

This blog is designated to all things related to my most recently published book, Beans and the Magic Sanctuary as well as any future publications related to the Sanctuary!

First you probably want to know who Beans is. He is the black cat that the Cat Distribution Society so lovingly graced us with in early 2024.

If you don't know what the Cat Distribution Society is, it is a highly skilled magical organization that no one can see, who grants a person who gets lucky enough, a cat, seemingly out of thin air and that cat will eventually become that persons responsibility. There is no warning. No heads up. No notification to have all of the things you will actually need to raise the cat that gets distributed, the cat just appears. Like magic. 

Beans (not his original name but we honestly cannot remember what we initially called him) just showed up one evening while we were doing the alpaca chores. Kristina heard meowing and we immediately traced it to a hole the rabbits had dug under the alpaca barn. Beans wouldn't come out but we right away started putting food and water out and since it was the winter, that water of course froze, so we absolutely had to get a heated water dish as well as build him a box and stuff it with straw to keep him warm.

It took weeks, months for him to trust these were all specifically for him and even longer to trust Kristina. He was supposed to be hers. Not mine. Not ours. Hers. They built a rapport. They created a bond. I minded my own business and stayed way the hell out of it. We have two cats inside, I was perfectly content being their mom and their mom only.

He started following Kristina around when she did chores. Her little helper. She actually couldn't wait to get up and get outside to see if he was waiting for her. He tolerated my presence but had no interest in getting anywhere near me. The feeling was mutual bud. 

Kristina and Beans did this little dance of theirs for months. Honestly, it was the highlight of my day. Watching her look for him, or him running out in front of her to do the chores. She loves cats, would have probably 10 if the other two in the house, well one for sure, would allow it. 

In February, other cats started showing up, so naturally we had to make sure they knew who the insulated box belonged to by writing his name on the box. For what it is worth, this did not deter MANY different cats from checking out his new place, despite Kristina's best efforts. 

Early March the first physical contact was made and well, the rest is history. 

Life carried on. We eventually named him Beans, after the Bush's Beans factory near our house and in honor of our unpaid project manger Kevin who works there. 

And then something happened. Beans used up one of his 9 lives. It would appear that he had had an entanglement with another cat as he arrived one day extremely beat up. Badly actually. With many cuts. Immediately after we realized this, an orange cat with a scar on one eye started coming around and eating all of his food and Beans would disappear. We started putting the food inside at night to deter the orange cat and hoped and prayed he would disappear. Eventually he did and eventually Beans made his way back but he was a changed man. He had seen things. Experienced things he would never be able to tell us. And it was in this moment that I lost all ability to stay detached from this creature. 

From that day forward I made it my mission to go outside and ALSO bond with him. It happened quite quickly and I would make multiple trips out to visit him. I was toast. I fell head over heels in love with this cat that I wanted nothing to do with and had ZERO problem letting Kristina have. It was over for me. And in these moments of bonding I wondered if he could tell his story, about how he arrived here, why he is here, how fun would that be to write a story from his perspective.

And that is how the book Beans and The Magic Sanctuary was born. 

If you have not yet purchased it, you can do so here from our Etsy shop
Beans and The Magic Sanctuary

It is also available at Amazon, but if you click the link above, you will get a signed copy from both Beans and I!

Stay tuned here for more updates on future Beans and the Magic Sanctuary books and just general updates on Beans as well as the rest of the animals here at the Sanctuary! We are so glad you are here!