Being Cladotherian

a little look at the reasons behind why I call myself a cladotherian

It's not something I would have chosen. It's not something I particularly like. It's simply what I am, and I accept that.
It took me a long time to come to that conclusion and to accept it. When I first descovered therianthropy (somewhere around 1998-1999) I read about cladotherianthropy and dismissed it. I just couldn't get my head around how anyone could be *all felines* or *all canines* or any other such thing. The way others talked about the term didn't do much for it's favor either, since most seemed to brush it off as a copout. A term used by someone either too lazy to narrow down their theriotype or by someone unable to do so.
I wasn't lazy, I was prepared to put the work and research in to finding out what I was and so I brushed the term aside and forgot about it.

I knew I felt feline. Every thought, every movement, it all felt feline. I felt humanfeline. So I spent a few years (around 5 to be exact) researching, meditating and looking into myself to find what I was. I had settled on leopard for quite some time, it seemed to fit me very well, but that nagging at the back of my head wouldn't let go.
Then I found the amur leopard and for once I thought everything had fallen into place. That cat was *me*, I could feel it. But there was still that silent nagging, a feeling that there was something missing, something that I just couldn't find.

Back then I'd been shifting for as long as I could remember. Most of my shifts were to what I thought was amur leopard, though there were a fair few who had different traits, different feelings. They'd always confused me, but I kept hearing people say that cameo shifts are very common. That was what those shifts were, right? Just cameos, nothing important. I tried to brush them aside as that, though they never went away.
But then something read sparked a curiosity, and for some reason I desided to take a look at cladotherianthropy again. This time I spent a long time thinking on it, how it may be possible and whether any of it related to me. I took another look at myself, this time looking at all the things I'd previously been denying.
Up until that time I'd never spent much energy on figuring out what I felt made me therian, I just was and that was enough for me. But at that time I started to realise that if I was to find myself, I needed to go back and take a look at what happened to make me that way. And so I did, I looked at many possibilities, considered them all and then settled with the one that felt right for me. Felt true for me.

So, what is it I believe? I feel that I have been many felines in the past. How many and exactly what types I'm unsure, since the further back I go the sketcher the details get. I feel that I, as a whole possess many features that come together to make me what I am. Three very important features being the mind(spirit), body and soul. I've taken these things and given them meaning true to *me*. I don't claim my definitions to be "the one true truth", you may have another view on what they are and if they even exist. That's fine, that's good, this is simply *my* truth.
Spirit: My personality, my mind. The way I act, the way I feel, the way I view and understand things. My point of view, my personality.
Body: My phisical self.
Soul: The core essance of what I am, my identity.

I feel that it is my soul that influences my spirit and body to act and feel how they do, but also my body which shapes my soul upon creation and my spirit being the embodyment of both these aspects, representing my mind and emotions.
I believe that when I am first born into a new life, that life will shape my soul to include it in my identity. Though my soul has also been shaped by my previous lives allowing those lives to play a part in my identity also. But I feel that the more distant a life becomes the more it will 'loose it's shape' if you will. Meaning that as each new life shapes me, the older lives begin to fade until they eventually become completly eclipsed.

I feel that my most recent life (before this one) was as an amur leopard. The reason for that being because I feel such a great sense of being with those creatures and they seem to play a very big part in my identity. Other felines that I believe I have been include a black housecat, a male tiger, a cougar and a bobcat. Each have played a steady and constant role in my life, I have aspects from them all and shifts which display them reletivly regularly. I don't claim those to be the only felines I have been, I don't feel I could ever find out every single life I have lived.
I'm also not sure why I have been so many felines or why I am human now. Perhaps it was pure chance, perhaps some odd twist of fate. I don't know.

As I've said before, I don't consider myself a polly were. The reason for that being I am not a human, a leopard, a tiger and a housecat etc... I have a single identity, and that identity includes human and many felines. The feline in me, while it may hold certain characteristics and memories relating to the individual species, does not have a set species as it is. I am many felines rolled into one with a coating of humanity. Each life has certain aspects which show through at different times, but they are all merged together into the humanfeline me.

It took me a long time to find it, and I must admit that I was nervous to anounce it to myself and to others in the therian community. Cladotherianthropy has such a bad reputation it put me off from the start. But in the end I realised I just had to let go of what others may say or think. I had to find *my* truth and that's what I believe I have done.

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