I know, I know.  It’s Spring Break, and I vowed to step back from the journal for awhile.  Last night’s dream though - I can’t forget that now, can I?

I’m out alone for a nighttime walk on a lonely desert road when I encounter a framed wooden door in the road.  I turn the doorknob, open the door and pass through, closing it behind me.  It’s like I’ve entered a house or a different room, but it’s still the same bare, rocky desert setting on the other side.

Almost immediately a giant cat appears in front of me, a black panther.   I know I’m supposed to look large and menacing before panthers (or is that with bears?  I always forget which strategy is supposed to give you your best chances against which beast), but instead I just collapse to the ground and cower, hoping for the best.

The great cat approaches and takes me under its control somehow in a way that I can’t quite recall now.  Maybe he holds me down with his paw, or opens his jaws around my skull.  And then?  Nothing.  He starts purring loudly, and feels warm next to me and almost comforting in the cool desert air.  I’m terrified and feel helpless, but nothing dire is happening - yet.  With my free arm I carefully pull out the camera and take a few surreptitious images of the harsh desert surroundings and of my captor, a last bit of documentation as I await my fate.

Then, a new sound.  Someone is approaching from the other side of the door.  I softly tap on it as a warning to enter with caution so as not to startle my nemesis into snapping his jaws shut and abruptly putting out the lights.  The door opens, a uniformed man enters - a park ranger possibly. The cat, no stranger to this new figure perhaps, recedes to a safe distance while the two of us leave the scene and cross back through the door to the other side, closing it behind us.

I’m alive!  The man drives me home and drops me off at another door, my house.  I open it, eager to reunite with Rachael, anxious to share my tale with her, and the dream ends.  Those final photos I took aren’t available to share with you after all of course - somehow that never works - so you’ll just have to use your imagination.  Trust me - it was a very large cat, and a very frightening situation.

Two doors.  A transition dream obviously, but from what and into what?  From the desert back to the Pacific Northwest and this beautiful spring we’ve just stepped into?  From the end of one tour and into another?  Or the end of the pandemic and our premature relief that we seem to have come through?

Bruce and I got together at Café Ponté yesterday morning for a long overdue coffee date.  Among other topics we reminisced on the great cats in our past lives, triggered by a cartoonish painting of a cat that reminded me of his beloved Pinkie.  My favorite cat was the indomitable César, a stray that wandered into our lives when Shawn and I were batching it before Rachael stepped in the door too and really shook things up for good.

César wasn’t the cat that came to mind when Bruce and I were reminiscing though.  It was Prufrock, Rachael’s sleek, pantheresque black and white cat.  I loved Prufrock too, and remember him best for when he would enter our bedroom in the middle of the night through the window we left open for the cats.  He would hop down from the window sill onto the bed, sit on the pillow curled next to my head, and purr loudly.

So maybe that’s Prufrock come back to haunt my dreams.  I still don’t know what it all means though.   I should have a session with the Tarot lady.

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