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Issue 15, November 1999Adventurous Paws©Jane Teresa Anderson, November 1999
I left the house by the back door, striding into the morning sun when suddenly my heart struck a long, slow beat. Was that a tiger sprawled out there in the near shadows, silently gazing at me? Reality stalled into breathless stillness. Powerfully and magnetically the tiger measured my frozen move. I reached slowly into my pocket and pulled out a slither of exquisite chocolate, somehow knowing that this tiger was an elegant, old, Italian species that would be placated by my luxurious offering. "Chocolate-dipped fish," I nodded to the people behind me, "Italian tigers just love chocolate-dipped fish. This will satisfy his hunger." This solution satisfied me too, until I woke up, "Chocolate-dipped fish! Yuk!!!" Leaving the exotic tiger for a moment to his feast, pause (paws?) to consider whether you have ever dreamed of cats: any cat, big or small, wild or domestic. A recent conversation in the Members’ Community Forum (at the web site) focussed on cats and the meaning of cats in dreams. Cats, like all animals and people in our dreams, tend to symbolise aspects of ourselves. So what it means to dream of cats depends, largely, on what YOU think of cats, what part they’ve played in your life, and what personality they show in your dreams. Regard your dream cat as showing you, within the story-line of your dream, something about yourself. Cats can be seen as comforting indoor creatures, independent adventurers, sensual felines, screeching alley brawlers, pampered ornamentals and witches aides …just for starters. Their general independence and ancient association to witches and various deities tends to be the predominant feeling many people ‘get’ when contemplating cats. In this way they often make sense in dreams when seen as symbolic of our intuition and ‘psychic’ wisdom. The bigger cats such as jaguars and panthers are often associated with shamans, adding again to this symbolism. I was reading through the cat discussion in the members’ community forum when I suddenly realised something. Apart from my Italian tiger, most cats in my dreams are not actually visible. They’re always off adventuring somewhere and I have an awareness of their whereabouts in more of a ‘psychic’ sense than a visual sense. I hadn’t noticed this before and this led me to think back. In a dream around ten years ago, my unseen cat led an adventurous expedition around a headland and I woke up wishing I had gone along. My knowledge of dream symbolism accelerated rapidly after that, followed by my commitment to myself to work in dreams professionally only a year later. Looking back I can see the unseen, intuitive part of myself had already set out on the adventure - it just took the physical me a little longer to catch up. In this way cats can symbolise the part of ourselves which 'goes ahead', which foresees and assesses the future before we physically come along behind it in manifestation. In my dreams I often venture forward, pick up pieces of the future, investigate various paths and then later, and more cumbersomely, follow the chosen paths physically. I believe we all do this, but my cat dreams have encapsulated this process for me. This is awesome: the knowledge that this ‘invisible’ part of the self checks out advance territory, makes decisions and lays plans that we, awake, may follow without realising the sheer power of our own magnificence which has already set the path. A friend of mine films tigers as part of his living. Recently, feeling a little tired of the long, slow, patient, waiting-game side of his business, he decided to have his photo taken with the most assertive male tiger of the bunch. Not only that, but he decided to walk away from the shoot with his back to the tiger, filled with the power and adventure of the moment. Although he was courageous enough to do this in his waking life, we can all draw similar energy from our dreams. When you feel a sense of awe, power or inspiration from a dream animal (a part of yourself) you can bring this quality into your waking life by summoning up the memory of the feeling in the dream. You can communicate to someone while enhanced by ‘tiger-power’, draw confidently on your ‘intuitive-cat-power’ or rely on your ‘cat-independence’ to steer you through your waking life situation. After all, if you’ve touched that feeling in your dream, you can live it again in your waking life. So what can I draw from my chocolate-fish eating Italian tiger? Fish, in dreams, often symbolises spirituality. I felt on one level that my dream tiger was the part of myself that would prefer my spiritual lessons to be delivered with sweetness. More resoundingly, though, I saw in the tiger a hunger for the chocolate-dipped variety of spirituality: one that would allow me to fulfil my spiritual work and passions while also receiving the chocolate trimmings in life! Balance in all things. What a great excuse for eating chocolate. Bacio, anyone? Jane Teresa Anderson
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