The Wildcat Whisperer

In the summer of 2020, I had an idea for a story and the start of a composition around the story. This came into focus after re-reading a short book by Alice Miller called "Drama of the Gifted Child" (which has nothing to do with gifted and talented people, rather, it asks and answers the question: why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation?) One former composition classmate thought this could be a 15 minute mini-dance theater piece, and another thought it could easily be a full-blown opera. At the time this felt too big, but it is now publicly documented, whether or not it comes alive in musical form.

The story opens with the primal and feral wildcat having been rejected by its cold-hearted family as a child, wandering the forests and land ever since, never belonging anywhere. Alone, it acts without self-consciousness as it avoids contact with potential threats and no one is ever watching, so it can at times be a comical goofball.

It is startled when one day it hears a voice, and encounters the whisperer for the first time. Possessing no social skills, the wildcat assumes the whisperer is a threat and explodes outward with rage and aggression, hoping to make the whisperer feel small and vulnerable. Curiously, the wildcat does not try to destroy the whisperer, having found the whisperer's voice to have a mysteriously alluring quality. The whisperer does not: run, counter brute force with brute force, or display a cheery affectation, which would only invalidate what the wildcat expresses.

Instead, the whisperer listens to the wildcat and begins to echo back to the wildcat what it is saying. The wildcat heaps upon the whisperer rage, contempt, grandiosity, disgust, stubbornness, fear, denial, disrespect, and despair. The whisperer is aware of all of it and judges none of it, instead mirroring it back with compassion and empathy, along with an added richness of depth and emotion the wildcat is unable to express.

Over time this chips away at the tormented wildcat until, utterly defenseless, the wildcat howls with humiliation, self-disgust and pain over its treatment of the whisperer because it feels for the very first time an intense longing, and aching loneliness. The whisperer continues to echo back with compassion and empathy, with additional insights. One example exchange:

Grieving wildcat: my parents never showed me love.

Whisperer: your parents never showed you love, not because you were unlovable, but because they had unmet needs and could not see you as you are. I see you as you are.

Deeply shaken, the wildcat yearns to interact with the whisperer, but lacks the ability to do so. The tables turn, and the whisperer begins to sing as the wildcat attempts to mirror this, not so effectively at first, but then improving. This ends with the wildcat daring to see the whisperer as it is - a kindred spirit, one who has transformed from unconscious victim to conscious survivor able to engage honestly and without self-deception.