What does it mean to "have a cat on one's head"?

What does it mean to “have a cat on one’s head”?  Well, If one is walking or driving around with a cat on one’s head, one can expect a rather startling response from the people one meets.  I actually had the experience of driving around with a cat on my head last summer, when I attempted to take both of our cats on a long drive in the car.  (See my essay, “Cats to the Lake”, May, 2010.)  One cat got loose and frantically tried to climb on top of my head while I was driving down the road.  (You’d be surprised the looks you get when you are driving around with a cat on your head!)

When I am in the animus, which I can be from time to time, my discriminatory thinking function becomes desperate, driven, and erratic, like the behavior of my cat which repeatedly tried to climb on top of my head while I was driving.  When I am in such a state of possession, people do indeed look at me like I have a cat on my head!  (Do I need to point out that the “desperate”, driven, and erratic behavior of my computer mouse was much the same?)  As you will see if you read my essay, I gave up the enterprise of driving the cats to the lake, by the way.

As mentioned previously, a cat in a woman’s dream is quite often a symbol of the woman’s animus in a bewitched (i.e., non-human) form.  Sometimes when an individual has worked on themselves for a very long time, as I have, there is just a small part of a complex that remains bewitched and needs to be dealt with, and sometimes, by the grace of God and through human devotion, it may then someday be swept away by a puff of wind.  Or, in some cases, it might just be eaten by the mouse of the Lord!

I take it to be the case here that the bewitched animus was almost, but not quite completely redeemed.  There was, so to speak, a tiny bit of “cat” (i.e., cat hair, remnants of a partially bewitched animus) still interfering with the ego/Self axis, the communication channel between the ego complex and the Self (the god image).  This reminds me of Marie Louise von Franz’s elucidation of the fairytale of the star flower shirts.[1]  This fairytale, she says, describes how finding the appropriate human response to “clothe” a dynamic complex of the psyche is critical in redeeming it from its autonomous functioning.  It shows, says von Franz, how quite normal people can still have one small function that is slightly “possessed”.  She even comments that this condition is a good thing, because without the “thorn in the flesh” psychological development stops and becomes sclerotic.  If one can patiently and lovingly work on oneself, i.e., make the “star flower shirts” (in the language of the fairytale), one can redeem the bewitched animus, by the grace of God. [2]  

If a woman’s psyche is too rationally “masculine” in its orientation, then it may be that the cat, for her, takes on the same characteristic symbolism that it has in men’s dreams and in the dominant, masculine culture:  a symbol of unconscious narcissism and comfort-seeking indolence that blinds the woman’s perception of herself and chokes off her impulse to have her intuitive voice heard.  Clearly, this was the condition I was in prior to my decision to begin this blog.  By dealing with my “cat and mouse” issues through my creative writing, I have been able to move forward with doing what I need to do.

Wilor Bluege, November 25, 2010

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[1] Seven young men are bewitched and turned into swans.  A girl is required to make seven star shirts in order to redeem the swans and turn them back into men.  The girl finishes all the shirts except one, which lacks one sleeve.  The girl throws the shirts over the swans transforming them back into men, except for the youngest who gets the shirt without a sleeve.  That young man is only partially returned to human form:  he still has one wing instead of his second arm.  Only a small part of him remains bewitched.  The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Myths in Fairytales, Marie Louise von Franz, p.95.

[2] The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Myths in Fairytales, Marie Louise von Franz, p.95.