Night of November 2, 1969. Sunday.

This was recurring as a young boy when first moving to Cubitis in 1968. It related somewhat to my previous attempts to watch the movie "Cat People" at my sister Marilyn’s apartment in 1966 (1942 version, which I first tried watching around age four and could not focus on it - I thought for some reason that it was about groups of black house cats going after people, which it was not of course) but was somehow never able to get through it as I always fell asleep whenever it aired. To date, I have still not seen the entire movie.

Still, Simone Simon (more as the Irena Dubrovna persona), the actress (rare recurring childhood celebrity dream, I suppose) is my mother as she appeared in that movie. She sleeps in my room because I am supposedly ill (although I do not actually feel ill in any way, perhaps just a mild cold). This recurred over several nights, and part of the reason seems to be that my mother in real life shared my room for a short time when I was ill and was a heavy snorer - her snores transforming into “wolf growls” in my light sleeps.

My bed was aligned along the east wall of my room at the time, the foot blocking the jalousie-window door to the carport (of which there were two, the other with living room access), oriented south to north. My mother’s bed on the northwest corner, head to the west and west to east orientation. In the near-darkness, lumpy blankets could look like anything, including animals at rest.

I remember many times, waking up and getting a distinct impression that Simone Simon would protect me in either her adult human form or as a panther if a different animal wandered into my room - these were often restless half-sleeps. However, I sometimes also got the impression that there was a wolf at the foot of my real mother’s bed. This was not a strong impression or nightmare, just an odd uneasiness and “I’d better check every now and then by looking up” routine.