Hunted by Felidae

Somewhere far off in the Cascadian tumult, I dreamt that I was on a blasted heath, grey in color including the sky, with a thick cover of dust. I had a staff in my hand, with a piece of rope tied to the end of it. It was knotted into a noose shape, but not big enough to even go around a small animals neck. I am not sure why the loop was so small. I was looking for wild fauna, but had a trembling fear that there were mountain lions and cougars and black panthers. I know these predators don’t all belong to the same bioregion but I still fabricated in my mind that they were there. I could feel something like a half-material shadow watching me from a distance, and it’s shape-shifting form suggested it was a different big cat whenever I caught a glance of it. There were rock crags and cliffs that led to immanent death, and the landscape was in black and white and gray. I crawled up to one of the precipices and made a circle in the dust with the end of my pointed staff and crouched on all fours waiting for whatever was coming. I had visions of being mauled by the cat, and wanted to return to the base of the mountain where my mate was waiting for me, She didn’t know I had been hunted. I looked through the small loophole at the end of the rope on my staff and and just waited…