Tarot Tuesday - An old (but new) deck

The first Tarot deck I ever owned was "The Tarot of the Cat People," gifted to me by my first boyfriend on my 18th birthday. I've always been a cat person, and the illustrations on this deck are beautiful. At the time, I was very much into Vampire the Masquerade Live Action RolePlay, or LARP. This involved getting together with a bunch of friends and pretending to be our characters for a few hours each weekend. My character was a gypsy-raised vampire who told fortunes with her Tarot deck.

I loved that character; I had some evenings I will never forget playing her. And the Tarot - I told some amazing fortunes. I told one of the Storytellers all about the character he was playing, to the extent he pulled me aside and demanded to know who'd let me look at his notes. I played this character, and used those cards for game, for several years. And the cards took an imprint. Whenever I attempted to do a spread for me or a friend, inevitably the response would be "well, that's a perfect spread for my character, but completely wrong for me!"

So, sadly, I set that deck aside. I went through a few other decks. The Dragon Tarot that a friend had in high school, though it had cool illustrations, just never clicked with me. I couldn't read it. The Celtic Dragon Tarot is GORGEOUS, and I use it with my spellwork, but it never worked well for spreads. The Housewives Tarot is brutally honest and blunt, but still hard for me to read. I just never found a deck that was as intuitive as the Tarot of the Cat People was.

So about a month ago, at The Crystal Fox here in Maryland, I happened across the Tarot of the Cat People. A new deck. Same illustrations, just - not the deck that I'd used in game. So I bought it. It's like finding an old friend who you'd lost touch with. It's so familiar, but I still find myself relearning the details.

Do you use the Tarot? What deck do you use? Did you have to go through many decks to find the right one?