Dreaming With Cats
By Francis Battista
I have this theory. It's not much of a theory, but, to paraphrase Monty Python, it is mine.
My theory is this: Just as dogs protect us on the physical level, cats do the same for us on the spiritual level. I have no evidence for this belief apart from the wonderful sense of protection and peace that I get from going to sleep with a few cats on the bed. Just as the dogs are on permanent alert for intruders, the cats protect my dreams, patrolling the astral highways and keeping any lurking terror from invading my explorations and adventures. Stepping into the dreamworld with a cat snoozing on my pillow is like visiting a foreign country with a friend who grew up there.
Treat, the magical black cat with too many toes; Joey, the fat and happy tabby; and Molly, the luxuriantly long haired, gray-and-white couch potato, take their positions on the bed as I drift off to sleep. I am assured by their presence as I slip into the familiarly strange world of shifting shapes, distant lands, and long-dead relatives and friends.
So what's going on here? Let's face it, cats are weird creatures in that slightly spooky way that got them into big trouble during the Middle Ages. You know, chasing invisible things through the air, chirruping at unseen butterflies, all the while skin rippling and tail slashing. And then there's all that time spent in Zen sittings: eyes half closed, paws folded under the chest, not asleep, not awake, just somewhere else.
There are plenty of stories and conventional wisdom from cultures, ancient and modern, suggesting that cats have free access to cross from the outer world to the inner world, which makes them -- and here is a new word for your vocabulary -- psychopomps. Now, I once knew a cat named Psycho, but this has nothing to do with being psycho or pompous -- although he was both. A psychopomp, like the Greek god Hermes, is a being that moves freely between the two worlds, transporting people and messages in both directions. The Celts, for example, believed that through a cat's eyes, the fairies could see into the human world, and we could look through a cat's eyes into theirs. One oriental culture holds that a cat leads the departed soul through the horrors and pitfalls of the underworld safely to paradise. Nice kitty.
I wouldn't put any of the above abilities past Treat, who carries herself with the bearing and self-importance of the Queen of All Realms Seen and Unseen. But Molly and Joey are your basic pussycats, and a less mysterious pair you couldn't find. But I guess that's the point. There is nothing mysterious about any of this for a cat. It's just what they do.
So, here's my take on what's going on. In dreamland, all of us -- people and cats -- behave as our true selves, without social constraints or the limitations of our physical identity.
Imperious, mysterious Treat, who stalks the house with the rolling shoulder gait of a big cat, becomes a majestic, black panther. Chubby Joey is a clown with claws, and easily transitions into a great, gray and black Tony the Tiger, while Molly, when she bothers to move at all, floats through that strange world like a massive Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. And I, like Mowgli or Peter Pan, am free to wander in awe through the jungle of my dreams with three formidable companions ready to stare down any nightmarish intruders, pounce on pizza-induced monsters, or lick any horror movie leftover vampires into submission.
And then again maybe there's nothing extraordinary going on here at all. No psychopomps, no alter egos in dreamland, no out-of-this-world anything. Maybe it's just the presence of a warm, contented creature breathing softly next to my ear that eases my way between here and there.
For the cats, though, it's a simple case of mind over matter. They don't mind, and what you or I think doesn't remotely matter.
