The Squirrel and the Cat

Things that were difficult to accept when you were a child may leave a psychic residue that your adult dreams attempt to clear. This dream and the next revisit childhood rites of passage.

The Dream: I’m on a walk with a child. We are talking about a builder. We are in a rural eastern area that is about to be built into a suburban development. In the middle of our conversation I’m distracted by a squirrel in a tree. I point it out to my child. We think it’s cute. Suddenly I see a cat stalking the squirrel and I am concerned for its safety but don’t take any action: I simply worry. The cat’s paw is very close to the squirrel’s tail. We leave, and when we come back later I see the squirrel dead, lying on the ground. I hope it didn’t suffer, knowing how cats tease their victims. I point out the dead squirrel to my child. Even as I do I think I should keep my mouth shut and not distress her. I realize I speak to share my own distress.

Interpretation: The dream shows a movement from the simple to the complex: from child-like innocence (rural) to less attractive but more complex and structured adulthood (suburbs). The mind is getting ready for being expunged from the  Garden of Eden: the awareness of death.

Overcoming the Past

Dreams can deal with painful material from the past, as I think this one does. Even without specifically remembering the event, the dream helps us resolve the issues involved.

The Dream: I’m out driving, trying to avoid a rough-looking neighborhood. I turn into a street with older buildings which look like one-story garages. It’s a poor neighborhood, but bright. I wonder if I’ve arrived in a scary part of town after all, but I see children, smiling and happy-looking, so I don’t feel threatened.  At the end of the street is a low house with a screened-in front porch.

I go in. I chat with the woman who lives here. She is middle-aged and I am younger. She has a tasty-looking dish on a sideboard. I try some and find out it’s made of squirrel. I think using squirrels for food might solve the problem I have with them eating the seed in my bird-feeder, and besides, it is delicious. But I wonder who will skin them.

There is a silver contraption on another sideboard. To my surprise, the woman pulls out a very long, sharp gleaming silver knife. I am uncomfortable with her standing there with this knife in her hand. “This belongs to the children,” she says.

Interpretation: I go into the past (a street with older buildings), where I feel threatened (the rough-looking neighborhood) and meet the woman in charge (the part of me still living with an old wound). She feeds me unusual and unexpected but delicious food. Besides nourishing me, this food might be a way to protect my offerings to my soul or spirit. Birds often represent both; and I want to safeguard my “bird-feeder” from the squirrels. But there is some ambivalence: eating the food, solving the soul problem, requires skinning the animal (exposing my vulnerability?)

The woman surprises me by pulling a knife out of an old wound (silver can represent the past, tarnished and/or precious). At first I find her possession of this knife threatening, but she diffuses its power by saying it belongs to the children. Perhaps she is hinting that children caused the painful event in the past. However, the children in the dream are not threatening, signaling I’ve moved on.