A Collaboration: Dreaming of Big Cats

Felines that awaken in our dreams, becoming messengers of the night.

Welcome to this edition of Walking the Liminal!

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Today, it’s a collaboration…

I’m excited to share with you a collaboration between me and

Jenna Newell Hiott

, done as an email conversation around dreams, specifically, ones featuring big cats!

We both see dreams as oracular, filled with allegories of our lives. Similar to a spread of tarot cards, the symbols and archetypes in our dreams inviting us to explore their deeper meanings.

Dreams offer us windows into understanding ourselves, our life and the mysteries of existence. They can be fun, beautiful, and exhilarating, but they can also be scary, unsettling, and even terrifying…

JULIE:

Big cats are a recurring theme for me in my dreams. On the whole they aren’t aggressive with me, but they do demand my respect, they are wild animals after all.

For example, in one dream I’m apprenticing with a woman who works with large felines. My role is to help her observe and care for them. Being that these cats roam freely, she instructs me to sit still on a platform and let a cat come to me. Sure enough, one does, descending from above like it’s coming down from a tree. As it settles in my lap, it seems to be a cross between a mountain lion and a panther. Looking more like the prior but moving like the latter. The woman takes care of the cat while I stay completely still.

I love that in this dream I let life come to me rather than reaching out. Honored to have a big wild cat in my lap, one that felt comfortable being there. Still, there was an underlying tension between feeling at ease and staying on guard. No matter how tame an animal may appear, it’s still wild at its core. Inviting me to look within and examine my understanding and relationship with power. What about you Jenna?

JENNA:

What an amazing dream! And what a gift to experience that big wild cat in your lap. It feels like it could be a moment of merging...with Spirit, with instinct, maybe even with power being born through you.

Big animals in dreams often feel like guardians to me. Bears guard the earth temples. Sharks, the water ones. I wonder if big cats guard the temple of our own sacred power. And maybe they show up differently depending on how we’re relating to that power.

In your dream, it seems you’re invited to hold it gently, to trust it. In one of mine, I'm with a lion and, at first, he's very companionable—almost like a pet. But then he leaves the room, and I hear terrifying sounds. I peek out the door and see that he’s mauling a man. I’m frozen in fear, torn between wanting to help and staying safe.

That dream left me with questions: Can I be in relationship with power without turning away from its intensity? What happens when I try to tame it? Or pretend it can’t be dangerous?

JULIE:

Jenna, you bring some significant questions. I too see big cats as symbols of intuitive and spiritual power, in my dream particularly as feminine energy, one that’s both fierce and mysterious.

Your dream was intriguing, the lion shifting from gentle to ferocious. A reminder that wildness lives in all creatures, including us. We may like to think we're above the animal world, more evolved and civilized, but are we really?

I had a similar dream where I was playing with a mischievous but very sweet rabbit, it kept me laughing. Next to us was a male lion, slept peacefully. Until the bunny decided to play with him. He awoke, startled, then agitated, snapping at the bunny. I could see the rabbit was done for. I left not wanting to witness what was only natural for the lion. And yet, it scared me.

I inquire, can I live from this inner wildness, not destructively but without trying to tame it as our culture prescribes? Can I embrace my own inner fire and passion… and let myself roar?

JENNA:

Julie, I love your questions, especially the one about letting go of a prescriptive life. That wild rabbit and sleeping lion stirred something in me. It reminded me of a dream where I was in a small Route 66-style town. As I passed a storefront, I saw a massive tiger statue. And then it moved. It turned its head and roared. More followed. Tiger after tiger, roaring to life from what I thought were just displays.

I wasn’t terrified, just a little on edge. Mostly I was fascinated. These beings weren’t coming for me, they were waking up. And I got to witness it.

It made me wonder: What sacred powers have we turned into statues? Where has our wildness been frozen into something decorative, symbolic, or contained? And what happens when it stirs?

Maybe we don’t always need to run from it or even engage with it. Maybe sometimes we’re just meant to witness its return and feel the thrum of awe.

What happens, I wonder, if we simply allow ourselves to notice the sacred power in places we’d thought were dormant?

JULIE:

YES! Here these big cats are metaphors asking me, us to honor this untamed, raw nature as sacred power.

Jenna, I love your dream. As I dream it, the tiger statues represent our life force, drained of vibrancy. Yet in the dream, they begin to stir with animacy. Inviting me to do the same! To contemplate, what has been anesthetized in my life? Where have I grown numb? And how can I release myself from this captivity and open to the mythopoetic callings from deep within my soul?

I too had a tiger dream recently that brought this wild cat energy home and anchored it deeply in my body. In the dream I was fast asleep in my own bed and in my familiar bedroom. Gently, I’m stirred from sleep as the door to the room begins to open. Crossing the threshold is a full-grown tiger. Calmly and powerfully, it proceeds to climb upon my bed and lie down beside me, putting its huge paw across my chest. We both fell asleep together, like a family of cats.

These dreams speak to me as invitations to revere the wildness of nature while also honoring our beautiful intimacy with it. Not one or the other, but both.

JENNA:

Yes...not one or the other, but both. I love how you said that, Julie. And I’m amazed by the parallel between your beautiful tiger dream and one I had just recently. Only in mine, the wild cat was tiny. A fluffy white kitten.

In the dream, she climbed into my lap and curled up contentedly. A woman nearby, maybe her caretaker, smiled and said, “You don’t carry the energy of trauma. You are healed. And so, she feels safe with you.”

I woke up so moved. Very often in dreams, when I see sacred power in the form of big cats, I’m learning how to relate to them. But here, the dream seemed to be showing how power was relating to me.

Just like in your dream, the wild one chose closeness. There was no need to take a stand; no danger to guard against. Just trust, presence, and rest.

What if sacred power isn’t only about intensity or confrontation? What if it’s also about becoming someone the wild can sleep beside?

This little cat wasn’t any less fierce than the big cats. She simply didn’t need to defend herself anymore. Maybe that’s part of stepping into our sacred power. It’s not only the reclaiming of our wildness, but also becoming a trustworthy steward.

IN CONCLUSION

This has been such a joy, Julie! I've loved wandering through these big cat dreams with you, marveling at their wildness, their wisdom, their unpredictability. I didn’t realize when we began just how many ways these dream cats would show up: fierce, tender, terrifying, hilarious, deeply intimate.

They really do seem to ask us to reckon with power. Not just how we claim it, but how we meet it, resist it, soften toward it, and allow it to rest near us. And not just any power… but sacred power. The kind that pulses through instinct, through presence, through the body itself.

We didn’t try to pin them down (can you imagine?), we just followed their tracks. We let the dreams lead us.

To Those of You Reading:

There’s something about dreaming with the wild that feels so ancient, like being invited into an mythic story that’s still being told. Big cats seem to carry messages from some deeper place, asking us to meet power in its rawest, most intimate forms.

And now we want to hear from you…Have you ever dreamed of a big cat?

What did it do? What did you do? What might it have been trying to show you?

Let us know what stirred in you—we’d love to dream it with you.

In sacred kinship with the untamed and the dreamworld,

Julie & Jenna

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Julie Schmidt

is a mystic, tarot reader, minister, and dream-walker who writes Walking the Liminal. Her work invites us into the various thresholds and cycles we meet in life…where myth, memory, and magic are the rhythms we dance with. Come walk the edge with her.

Jenna Newell Hiott

is a writer, ancestral healer, and sacred dreamer whose Substack, Spirit Connections, explores the unseen web of archetypes, ancestors, and divine relationship. Her work centers on ushering in a more relational way of being—one rooted in reverence, remembrance, and connection.

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