The “Cat Mama” and My Telepathic, Reality Straddling Cat

​My wife (Ann) has tagged me with an unusual nickname.  She sometimes calls me “Cat Mama,” a teasing reference to my close relationship with our 15-year old cat, Shadow.  In 2001, I adopted Shadow and his brother Tigger as 6-week old kittens (Tigger transitioned in 2011).  For many years, I was a single guy with two cats.  I learned by trial and error that my multiple feline ownership status was perceived by some dating prospects as strange.  So, this information became classified and was disclosed strictly on a need-to-know basis (i.e. almost never on a first date). 

Tigger and Shadow, circa 2001

When Ann and I started dating in 2008, I waited until our third date for the cat reveal.  When she came over to my place, I picked up Shadow and held him upside down, rubbing his belly.  I had started holding the cats upside down like this when they were kittens.  So, as adult cats, they were like silly putty in my hands.  From the deer-in-headlights look on Ann’s face, I immediately realized that my cat-putty demonstration was ill advised.  Our date ended quickly and awkwardly.  Thankfully, she was eventually able to see past this quirk of mine and the cats started to win her over.
 
I’m very interested in the concept of totem animals or animal spirit guides.  As a totem symbol, the cat has many different meanings including mystery, intuition, lunar (feminine or yin) energy, dexterity, laziness, and independence of spirit.  For me, however, the most interesting cat characteristic is the cat’s total disregard for ordinary borders or boundaries.  Good luck trying to fence in a cat!  A cat will either scale the fence or slip through small openings between the slats.   For lucid dreamers like me, this cat characteristic has a deeper meaning.  It represents the ability to easily overcome the “fence” that separates so-called waking reality from other parallel dimensions, including the dimension of dreams. 

The Cheshire Cat

​The most iconic depiction of a cat’s ability to slip easily between dimensions is the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).  In one scene, the Cheshire Cat converses with Alice from its position up in a tree.  But then the Cheshire Cat’s body starts to fade away, as if it is shifting to some other dimension, leaving behind only the residual image of its grinning face.

​“Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice 'but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”

Like most cats, Shadow is nocturnal.  He will meow at us (or paw one of us in the face) around 3:00 AM, demanding immediate doorman service.   When we know we want a good night of sleep, we plan ahead and lock Shadow in the garage.  Problem solved, right?  Well, not really.  It turns out that, for Shadow, the locked garage door is no more intimidating of a barrier than our backyard fence.  Shadow knows how to slide right through that garage door -- and into my dream state.
 
I see your eyes rolling, so let me offer a few examples.  In each of these case studies, Shadow was locked in the garage at the time I had the dream:

​• July, 2013. I experienced a false awakening dream, a dream where the dream setting was a replica of our bedroom and it seemed like I just woke up in bed.  When I “wake up” (I’m actually still asleep in bed) in this dream, Shadow is nibbling at my arm and I realize that this is what caused me to awaken.  I then wake up into “waking reality”.

• August, 2013. I had a dream where I was sitting on a couch with a black bear (with black fur, just like Shadow).  During the dream, I perceived this black bear to be a pet.  Then the bear started to playfully bite me in a manner similar to how Shadow sometimes playfully bites me.  I’m frightened by this bear’s biting and I wake up.

• March, 2015. I dreamed that I was at a yoga studio.  I’m surprised to see Shadow at this yoga studio.  Even more surprising, Shadow starts to talk to me in a muffled human voice, trying to get my attention.  I wake up.

• August, 2015.  I dreamed that I was sitting at a home office desk.  Shadow comes over to me.  I pet him briefly, but then he locks his teeth into my hand.  I struggle to get my hand loose and I wake up in the process of doing this.

​Fortunately for me, Shadow sometimes targets Ann instead of me.  Good kitty!  From my journal:  

​July 26, 2014
Dream 6 (5:54 AM).  Very vivid false awakening . . . . [Shadow] jumps up on the bed and goes to wake up Ann.  I conclude that Shadow must have somehow gotten out of the garage . . . . Ann grumbles something, expressing her annoyance with Shadow.  I’m trying to talk but seem unable to (apparently due to sleep paralysis).  There was a seamless transition between this false awakening and my return to waking reality.  I look more closely at Ann to see where I can find Shadow on her side of the bed. . . . By this point, I had fully transitioned to waking reality, but was feeling very confused.  Even as I typed my initial dream notes, I was not sure if I was still dreaming or awake.  It eventually became clear that Shadow was still locked in the garage and that my experience had been a false awakening dream.

Shadow, Showing Off His Supernatural Powers

​These are just a few samples from my large database of Shadow dreams where he wakes me up from a dream, seemingly in hopes that I will let him out of the garage.  Another one of my dreams paints an interesting picture of how a locked door is no barrier for Shadow’s consciousness.  The mail slot in this dream seems intended to serve as an analogy for the idea of dream telepathy. From my journal:

​February 28, 2014
Dream 2 (7:56 AM).  Dream within a dream.  In the “inner dream”, I’m near our front door.  Shadow is outside the front door.  I’m amazed to see Shadow somehow slide himself through a mail slot at the bottom of the front door (in waking reality, we don’t have a mail slot). . . .

In late 2012, I had a curious dream about a cat.  I occasionally assign titles to my dreams and I call this one “High Wire Act”:

​December 15, 2012
Dream 1 (1:19 AM).  The setting is the back part of a house. . . . There seem to be clothes lines running across the backyards from one house to another. . . . I notice there are some pumpkins hanging from one of the lines. Then I notice a cat balanced on one of the lines.  The cat is situated right in the middle of the line and I wonder how the cat managed to get out there. . . . I point out the cat and the pumpkins to Ann.  The cat is playfully attacking a teddy bear that seems to be clipped to the clothes line. . . . my impression is that there is a valley of some kind that runs between the houses and that the drop from the clothes line is significant.  Then I watch as the cat scampers along the clothes line back toward one of the houses.  The cat is moving on the line like a squirrel. Clearly he is fine and having a good time.

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​What is this dream about?   My intuitive conclusion was that this dream is about lucid dreaming and other altered states of consciousness.  Shadow has taught me that cats are experts in the “high wire act” of manipulating their consciousness.  The cat in this dream is showing me that the secret to their advanced flexibility of consciousness is fearlessness combined with a playful attitude.  In another 2012 dream, Shadow showed me another example of such playful acrobatics.  I dreamed that a basketball was rolling down a hallway, with Shadow on top of it.  He was somehow keeping himself balanced atop this fast moving ball – an impossible balancing act.
 
In addition to journaling my dreams, I also journal the intriguing (some would say “trippy”) visual and auditory experiences that often happen in the hypnagogic or hypnopompic state. These are the transition periods between wakefulness and sleep (and vice-versa).  I’ve found this state to be fertile ground for mind-expanding (drug free!) experiences.  In the following example, Shadow was napping with me and perhaps he was helping to give me a taste of a cat’s perception of parallel realities.  From my journal:

January 7, 2014
Hypnagogic Note (7:30 AM).  This could possibly also be characterized as a “false awakening” dream. I was drifting in and out of sleep.  I found myself confused.  After waking, I jotted down that I felt like I had been “reality straddling”.  I recalled three different aspects of this.  In “waking reality”, I was lying flat on my back and Shadow was sleeping on my belly during this entire experience.  But, I recalled seeing Shadow in the corner of the room (near the bathroom door).  I also recalled having an open book in front of me, as if I had been reading in bed (not the case in “waking reality”).  I then recalled having seen my iPhone in perhaps three different locations, whereas in “waking reality” it had always been in the same location. 

​I’ve never been to see an animal communicator, but I’ve become very open to the possibility that a human medium can attune his or her consciousness to receive messages from animals.  Shadow has occasionally communicated a desire or request to me via a dream.  Two examples from my journal:

​September 18, 2012
Dream 3 (6:30 AM).  Quick scene in our garage (which appears to generally match up with waking reality).  The garage looks like a mess.  The focus is on Shadow’s food area.  Instead of Shadow's bowls, there is a plate loaded with various leftovers.  They do not appear to be very appetizing. 
COMMENT:  When I feed Shadow, I usually change out one of his two water bowls and put some fresh dry food in his bowl, but without tossing the old dry food.  Perhaps Shadow wants fresh food only!

April 29, 2014
Dream 3 (6:10 AM).  I’m filling up Shadow’s water bowl.  It looks just like the bowl we have for him in the garage in waking reality. The scene then becomes out of proportion. Shadow in sitting in the water bowl.  He then submerges his head in the water and is licking the bottom of the bowl.  Then I am repeatedly rinsing the bowl, but I notice there is still a lot of crud on the bottom of it. 
COMMENT:  My immediate impression is that this constitutes a telepathic message from Shadow to please scrub his water bowl occasionally!  I honored the dream immediately.

​Shadow also once sent me a message while I was in the hypnagogic state, seemingly asking for some attention:

​October 26, 2015
Hypnagogic Note (6:30 AM).  I was drifting in and out of sleep.  I see an image of a hand petting a cat.  I then realize that Shadow is curled up beside me.  It seemed obvious that the imagery I saw was transmitted to me by Shadow.

In the Inner Guidance section of this website, I’ve written quite a bit about my “dream yoga” practice.  Essentially, dream yoga involves examining waking life in symbolic terms, as if it were a dream.  When we do this, we discover that many of the interactions that we have with both humans and animals are serving us as meaningful reflections.  I’d like to close this blog post with one intriguing example of this that involves Shadow.

For many years, I was experiencing very persistent congestion in both my sinuses and in my chest.   Things got to a point where my voice was constantly nasal sounding and I was coughing up phlegm throughout the day.  This became a chronic condition that continued for over a year.  At the same time, Shadow was going through a period where he was constantly throwing up in the house.  In Shadow’s case, we would almost always find a large piece of grass in his throw-up.   At the time, my sentiments toward Shadow were usually something like this: “Stupid cat! Why do you keep eating grass when you know you can’t digest it?”  ​

Eventually, I came to learn that the largest contributor to my congestion was my diet, especially my heavy consumption of acid-forming foods.  Both my dreams and some knowledgeable health advisors helped to lead me to this realization.  While I’m still not a health nut, I have gradually scaled back my consumption of acid forming foods.  Nowadays, I breathe a lot easier and, interestingly, Shadow almost never throws up.
 
I now understand that Shadow’s habit of ingesting a food (grass) that his body was unable to process was a synchronistic reflection for me – because I was consuming a lot of food that my body found challenging to process.  In this way, Shadow was serving me as a loving mirror.  As I was searching my journal for Shadow dreams to include in this blog post, I re-read the following dream that made this point very clearly.  If I had paid greater attention to this dream at the time, I could have improved my health much sooner.  From my journal:

​January 26, 2013
Dream 7 (7:03 AM).  The setting is the backyard of a house.  It feels like our old backyard at 245 Mallory Drive.  I see a shovel situated on a table.  On the blade of the shovel, I see some items that I associate as treats intended for Shadow.  We never gave them to him for some reason. Ann is there and she confirms that the treats are for Shadow.  I toss Shadow a chocolate covered espresso bean (in waking reality, a favorite “treat” of my own).  Shadow excitedly scrambles after the espresso bean.  Then I pick up part of a Snickers bar.  I break into smaller parts and toss them out for Shadow.  Shadow is excited and eats them up.
COMMENT ADDED 4-22-2016: I now see that this dream was intended to address my diet rather than Shadow’s.  A chocolate covered espresso been is probably the most acid-forming food that exists on the planet.  Whenever I would see Shadow throwing up after eating grass, this was really a reflection for me that I was “shoveling in” food that my body could not digest.

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