My wildcat

I figured out my dream! I had a dream about a wildcat a few nights ago and I’ve been obsessing about it ever since. I wrote about it and shared what I wrote during my cancer support writing group. I talked to various people about it, and I was considering calling my coach about it (I work with a coach occasionally, not regularly).

In the dream a friendly wildcat kept coming to my house. The cat was huge like a lion; low, long and sleek. She was reddish-brown on her back and beige on her belly.  She had a friendly lion-like face and a long tail.

The wildcat would show up at my house to visit me, and I would take her back to the preserve where she belonged. She kept showing up at my house. I kept taking her back to the preserve.

Each trip to the preserve got increasingly difficult, snowy and steep. On the last trip, right at the end of the dream, my car slid off an insanely steep snowbank. It looked as if the cat and I would continue off the far side of the road and right off the cliff.

When the car came to a stop at the edge of the cliff, the wildcat stretched herself from the back seat and put her face into mine, and looked at me with intense love. I realized I loved the wildcat because she so obviously loved me. I didn’t want to keep making the increasingly treacherous journey to return her to the preserve. I just wanted to let her stay with me. 

What does this dream mean? Presumably the lioness is a part of me that I keep pushing away out of a sense of duty. I kept taking the wildcat back to where I thought she belonged, even though it’s not what either of us want. But what exactly does she represent, and what would it mean to let her stay with me?

Wildcats often represent courage and power, and specifically this was a she-cat, a clearly female power. My cancer support group thought my dream was obvious – that I was repressing (taking to the preserve) my inner feminine courage. Ok, fine, maybe, but why would I be doing that? And in what way was I don’t that? And what, specifically, could I be doing differently instead? The symbolism may have seemed obvious, but the conclusions were not. There were no actionable implications.

Am I lacking in courage? Certainly there are risky things that I am deliberately choosing not to do. Like confronting past injustices. Or buying California real estate in the middle of a pandemic. Or doing much of anything in middle of the pandemic, for that matter.

But I don’t think that carting a wildcat off to a preserve represents some sort of Freudian repression of my female power, as neat and tidy of an answer as that would be (especially to a support group, lol).

The answer came to me as I stepped out of the shower and noticed a few blemishes (hives? mosquito bites?), which made me think of someone I know with cancer worse than mine. Last time I talked with my friend she had hives, and she was uncharacteristically upset about them, afraid they meant she was going to die soon.

I’ve been watching this friend go on and off chemo (like me, her body hasn’t been handling it well, except her chemo rounds are more powerful and more difficult than mine were). I’ve noticed when she’s on the chemo she’s teary and fearful. And when she’s off it she is incredibly outgoing and hilarious. Cutting-edge funny! The chemo changes her personality like night and day. And it was doing the same thing to me. It was the chemo causing the fear.

It’s a great disservice to patients that mental changes are not on the warning labels of a lot of the chemo products. My caring, but young and inexperienced doctor was shocked and baffled that the chemo was causing me significant mental issues. We were completely unprepared for it and had to research it ourselves – with help from a retired psychiatrist (a friend of mine), and another doctor (my sister).

I kept taking the rounds of chemo because it was the right thing to do – like continuing to make the trips delivering the wildcat to the preserve. Two weeks on chemo, one week off, two weeks on, one off. Each trip down chemo road banished my inner courage to a preserve. And the trips were getting more and more dangerous for both me and my wildcat. We were sliding in the snow, and nearly slid off a cliff.

Now my wildcat is back home, and hopefully she can stay with me for a long time. Until we both leave this earth together.

By the way, these pictures are all ours – John took them when he went on an amazing trip to Africa a couple of years ago. If you would like any of these at a better resolution (or any other pictures on my blog), just email me.

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