My Cat Virginia’s Antics

 

(Photos: Virginia on the dashboard and Haedrig looking up at Virginia while she climbs a tree)

In the morning, I took two boxes of incense out of a clear plastic bin and carried them across the hallway to the meditation room. Virginia followed me. I keep the door closed, so she doesn’t pee on the rug, so entering that room is a special treat. She wandered around, mewing cheerfully and swishing her big, fluffy tail. She walked to the ceramic Siamese Buddha in the corner… and she bit the Buddha. I scooped her up, carried her out of the room, and closed the door.

I came home, parked the car, and opened the car door. Virginia promptly climbed into the car and jumped onto the dashboard, where she shifted around, eyed her surroundings with inquisitive mews, and bit the dashboard. Meanwhile, Gabriel also jumped into the car, but after some sniffing around he jumped back out. I had to carry out Virginia.

A few days before all this, Virginia was in the neighbor’s yard, so I walked toward her, and she ran up a tree. Meanwhile, Gabriel and Haedrig ran down the sidewalk after me. I found myself in the awkward position of standing in the next-door neighbor’s yard with two of my cats and coaxing a third cat out of a tree.

A Nightmare, Toxic Relatives, and a House

I had a disturbing dream in which I owned what appeared to be a large old house that was sparsely furnished, and I was planning on living there, but a woman who was present in the front room with me informed me that the reason my mother and aunts went out was because they were planning on…I forget the terminology used, but it was something to the effect of pretending that the house wasn’t mine and claiming it as theirs by requesting some sort of ticket or token.

I think in the reality of the dream, this was a house I bought and had nothing to do with these evil relatives. I felt utterly horrified and knew I had to act fast, but I didn’t know how.

These relatives returned and were having amiable, cheerful conversation among themselves while not acknowledging my existence. I was panicking. For the sake of someone else who may have been present, I started scratching a message in a rubber rug (like in a car, but larger and partially rolled up), but the message was not showing up well enough for someone else to read it.

In this reality, toxic relatives stole a house from me (after years of their talking down to me, verbally abusing me, and slandering me), a house that an uncle left me. I was in the room when he was talking with my mother about who should he leave the house to, and she suggested me because of my passion for old architecture. So he did.

Warehouse Dreams

(The above is a photo I took at the Grimm warehouse sale. That is an Anubis-shaped mummy at a Trimet bus stop.)

In one night, I had two dreams involving living in a warehouse.

I had a dream in which I had recently moved into a large apartment or condo that was actually a warehouse. It had high ceilings with rafters and hanging lights like you expect in a warehouse. Portions of the large space were divided into rooms with walls that were more like partitions than walls. Along outer walls were large wooden shelves, spaced well apart, reaching to the ceiling and covered with various items, like coolers and whatnot.

My parents began to move in with me, and this meant figuring out who would have what bedroom. While this was under discussion, I was looking at the bedrooms, and one of my parents pointed out that I had the largest room, so I decided I would let my parents have that bedroom and I would move all my stuff into another bedroom. Meanwhile, I realized I’d better have less clutter, so I pulled random stuff off one of the high wall shelves and realized that these were items I had no trouble getting rid of (most of that stuff was probably there when I moved in); these items were a rusty metal rectangular tub or something like that, not a full-size bathtub but something white and metal and rusty that might have been used for hand-washing clothes; inside it was something else that was rusty and metal and at least partially white, and I think it was perhaps a baby stroller, though an abnormally small one. There may have been a big garage door, and I may have carried these items out that door and placed them outside for the time being.

Now that I’m writing this, it seems like the dream was more focused on clutter and rearranging and organizing stuff…and my parents were rather in the background.

I had another warehouse dream the same night, or rather early morning. I had just recently moved into a warehouse with a bunch of friends, communal-style, but they were also my co-workers of some sort—probably performance artists. The décor was much like in the other dream—a large, high-ceilinged warehouse with wooden partitions/walls. There was a very wide hallway, and along the left of it you could see these black wooden walls.

I hand-made lots of banners that were all on the same theme and I think looked Art Nouveau, and they were all part of a performance art piece that my colleagues and I were working on. One day I came home to find that they were all gone. I was shocked and confused and hurt…and found out that the stern landlady took them down because hanging large banners in these apartments was not allowed. We were very flustered (or at least I was!) and didn’t know what to do. I felt especially hurt because I had put a lot of effort into those banners. They were art, not garbage.

Wondering about the possible significance of warehouses, I looked it up on an online dream dictionary and learned that it has to do with storing up your untapped resources, such as skills you haven’t used (which I think can extend to skills you haven’t been using lately). And why do I keep having dreams in which I move in with my parents or they’re moving in with me? I suppose that’s part of the grieving process, but it could manifest in other ways, not specifically moving in with and living with my parents.

Of course, I did live with them for nearly two decades, and during the last few years of their lives, I visited because of their health problems—and was with them when they died. So I did return to my childhood home in this reality.

A House and a Swimming Cat

I dreamed that I was buying a huge and elaborate Victorian Queen Anne mansion that the entire family was going to live in (both my parents were still alive in the reality of the dream).

I was visiting the house while it was under major renovation; a contractor or someone had insisted that the entire upper floors needed to be rebuilt (I was thinking there may have been a fire). I wandered around inside a bit and heard a couple of male voices and figured they were working on the house and had no idea I was there. I felt like being secretive and, while I was in a second-floor hallway, headed for the stairs to sneak out…but someone who knew me called out to me, and I think it was my brother.

That may have been right before Francis and I were at the edge of a brook or some body of water, and we saw something floating toward us in the water. I was slow to realize it was my fluffy Siamese-mix cat, Virginia, floating on her back. Francis stared at her and said, “She’s purring!” I was anxious that she might drown, but he was right: she really was purring while floating.

She came steadily closer and reached the edge at our feet. That was a relief. He seemed in awe of her, a cat who floats and purrs while doing so.

I next remember sitting on a bench and looking up at the house while it was under construction. There was a brook or mote at my feet, separating me from the house and from several much smaller houses around the one I was going to buy.

Suddenly my mother was beside me in the bench. She wasn’t saying malicious, judgmental things; she was actually behaving. I think we talked about the progress of the house.

I saw something floating in the water toward us, and again it was Virginia floating on her back and purring, and I heard her clearly. I noticed close behind her was her sister, Vita, also floating on her back and purring. They joined us on the bench.

Next the four of us were wandering around inside the house. I noticed several red brocade, elaborately carved chairs and felt that more excited about the house. I thought about furnishing it and figured I’d sell my modern furniture and replace it with used and antique furniture more suitable for this house.

While we were still in the house, and I heard construction workers, I became concerned because I didn’t remember bringing Vita and Virginia in cat carriers. I figured my mother wouldn’t like to be in a car with two rambunctious cats wandering all over it, and I knew she wouldn’t approve. I recalled that since it was a dream, didn’t really come here in a car, and I woke up.