The Dream Walker

Humans believe cats have nine lives, but what I have is a special gift.

They call me Luna. By day, I’m the designated therapy cat at Shady Oaks Memory Care Center. They even gave me a pretty pink collar with a little white tag that states simply: “Therapy Cat.” But at night, after the day staff heads home and the fluorescent lights dim, I become something else.

I learned about my gift shortly after arriving at Shady Oaks. It first happened with Mrs. Eleanor Weissman in Room 214. When her hands found my fur in the darkness, they trembled. These were hands that had once created quilts for every new baby in her family. As she stroked me, I felt this power build inside me. And suddenly, I was walking through her remembrances.

In one, she sat quietly in a rocking chair with a half-finished quilt draped across her lap. Fabric squares surrounded her; some arranged in patterns, others scattered like fallen leaves.

“The yellow dress,” she murmured, picking up a faded square. “Sarah wore this… no. Mary? Was it Mary’s?” Her fingers traced the pattern. “Someone small. Someone who loved yellow. I can’t… I can’t…”

I pressed my body closer, and the memories became a torrent. Little Sarah, age three, twirling and dancing in a yellow sundress in the bright sunshine. Eventually, when she outgrew it, Eleanor carefully stored the dress, knowing its fabric would someday tell this story in one of her quilts.

The next morning, when Sarah came for her weekly visit, Eleanor’s eyes focused on her yellow blouse. “You’ve always loved yellow,” she said softly. “Just like that little dress you used to dance in when you were little.”

Sarah cried, and the nurses called it a good day.

I moved through the dreams of each resident. Maria Svensson’s room smells of peppermint and old books. She taught third grade for thirty years, but now her English comes and goes like a badly tuned radio. Tonight, she’s restless.

“Barnen,” she mutters. “They need… need their story. Charlotte… spindeln…”

In her dream, she sits on a stool in front of her class. The book in her hands keeps changing; sometimes it’s in English, sometimes Swedish. I walk through this dream and find the story she’s trying to remember. When I return to the present, I rest my paw on her hand. The next day, she tells her great-granddaughter about a spider who saved a pig. The words come out tangled between the two languages, but that doesn’t matter — love needs no translations.

Dr. Thomas Greene’s dreams are harder to navigate. His hands, which once performed the most delicate of heart surgeries, now fumble with shirt buttons. In his dreams, he’s always searching.

“Have you seen my…” he asks the nurses. “No. I need to find… There was something. Someone?”

I wish I could restore what his mind has lost, but when I walk through his memories, I find moments his heart still keeps. His six-year-old daughter, Julie, holding his hand on the way to school. The way she skipped every third step. How she always touched the oak tree at the corner for luck.

The next time Julie visits, he doesn’t recognize her face. But when she takes his hand, his fingers curl into the same gentle hold from those long-ago walks. I learned some memories live in those places which reside deeper than thoughts.

Rose Jenkins calls every man who enters her room “Robert.” The staff say it was her husband’s name; they were married sixty-three years. She doesn’t remember that he died last spring.

“Robert?” she asks each morning, reaching for the empty side of her bed. “Are you making coffee?”

In her dreams, I find no clear memories of Robert’s face, but there’s the feeling of him everywhere: the way he hummed while making coffee, how his weight shifted on the mattress, the sound of his laugh. I gather these fragments like precious stones.

Now when she reaches for the empty side of her bed, she smiles. Time and place slip through her fingers like morning mist, but her heart remembers the love.

I hear the staff talking about me. Some have noticed how residents sleep more peacefully when I’m nearby. And how sometimes, after I’ve spent the night on someone’s bed, the morning brings a small miracle or two. The staff just chalked it up to animal therapy. But, they don’t see the healing that flows through my fur like starlight; they don’t see how I collect the precious fragments of love and piece them back together in their dreams.

Dawn approaches now. Soon, the day shift will arrive with their charts and medications. They’ll find me curled up by the Nurses’ station. I’m just another therapy cat taking a break from my duties.

Somewhere in this building, someone is dreaming of yellow dresses, of spiders spinning words, of morning walks and coffee cups and love that outlasts memory. I’ll be there, gathering these precious fragments, helping hearts remember what minds have forgotten.

That’s the gift I was given. Not nine lives, just the one. But one with the power to walk through a thousand memories.