fruit, house & cats

I am standing in the kitchen of a house with my mother. I am eating raw zucchini that has been chopped up into chunks. My father arrives home eating a fresh peach. I notice the bright orangey flesh of the peach and can smell its sweetness. We open the front door and outside I can see a whole orchard of peach trees, row upon row of trees dense with ripe fruit. My father goes out into the orchard and I want to go to collect some fruit, but I feel I cannot leave my mother alone in the house – I need to protect her and make sure she is secure. The house is built on one vast square plane with a door in the middle of each side wall – a northern door, a southern door, a western door and an eastern door. I walk around the house, opening each of the doors, looking outside and then securing the doors against danger. I am concerned because the lock for one of the doors is on the outside of the house - I cannot lock the door from the inside. A large tiger walks in the door and prowls around the house. I stand in front of the door and when the tiger approaches me, I wrap the door around me – the door has changed from white painted wood into metal bars that are malleable. The tiger bats me with his paw but I am safe. I have enclosed myself in bars. Next, I am outside the house and I am watching a white lioness and her white cub try to come into our yard under the fence. The mother lion swipes at the fence, her big paws bending the wire. They are very beautiful yet may be dangerous.

Later, I am standing on a street corner buying a plant from a shop. I am outside the shop on the footpath, talking to the assistant over a brick fence. She is one of my closest friends from my teenage years and I am surprised that she is here with her husband. A frightening tiny yellow lion, as big as a small cat, walks along the top of the fence and jumps down onto the ground, circling around my ankles. He is aggressive and bites a small hole in my long white pants. I turn and glare at him and he cowers and runs away, turning into a domestic cat as he goes. He no longer looks so scary. I then see that the other two girls who were my closest friends as a teenager are also working in the shop with their husbands. I miss their friendship and I feel left out of the group.