A Cat Dream

I was at some way station among people who I know, including a young child. It was a cozy place, a little dim inside, rain beating against tall narrow windows, mild rain battering them. A crowded place. Tables, overstuffed chairs, bookcases, brook stone fireplaces with fires going. Noisy.

Meanwhile, I’m giving the little girl a gift: a small cat. This cat is purple, white, gray, and pink. Really sweet little critter. About ten pounds. Of greatest interest, the cat has a set of controls in its side. See, the cat is a radio. It’s a live animal and it’s also a radio. I’m telling her, “Look at this. Listen.” Showing her the controls. But you can also lightly tap the cat to increase the volume, or tap it in another place to change the song.

The little girl is fascinated. Runs off. Comes back. Time and again as the cat hangs with around me, rolling around on the ground, being petted.

But there’s more! Besides the little cat, there’s a larger, almost identical purple-white-gray-pink radio cat. This one is much larger: forty to fifty pounds. And not as friendly. Or playful.

I’m playing with the little one. It’s on its back. I’m about to rub its belly. The little girl comes running up. “No! Don’t rub its belly! It doesn’t like to have its belly touched.”

I’m petting the belly, though. The little one makes a distressed meow. The big one comes running over through the crowd. Gives me an angry look and some serious tail switching. I leave off petting the little one, who gets up and rubs against me.

It’s time for me to go. I get up and dust off, look for the door, and make my way across the room.

Dream end.

What A Dream

To begin, I’ve parked my car on a road by a small, rocky but sandy beach. Others are there. Someone says, “Look.” They’re pointing.

I turn and look. A large whale is being washed up onto the shore. A man is down there trying to wrestle it into place, an impossible idea. But past that, huge waves are rising and rushing toward us.

I say, “Oh my god, look at those waves.”

The first guy says, “That’s what I was talking about.”

I reply, “Run,” and start running along the beach.

Enormous waves crash behind us. Water is swirling back there. We’ve escaped. We’re on the move and still in danger. I’m with two others, males. They’re friends and younger. “We gotta go,” I say. “We need to get away from here.”

We find a rusted and repainted (gray and white) panel van. I start it and drive away. We drive and drive through the night. The van has a bench seat and no rear seats. It’s empty. The gas gauge is broken. We’re driving parallel to the ocean. Huge waves are crashing. The sea is rising. We need to go until we can turn inland.

I feel like we need gas. Finding a station open, we stop. I have forty dollars. That’s all the money between us. We’re hungry. But — I have a credit card. I talk to the attendant. I’m surprised but relieved he was open. Yes, but not for much longer, he tells me. We’re probably his last customers. I ask if I can pay with a credit card. Yes, he replies, leading me to another man. He’ll take care of us.

We eat and buy supplies, paying with gas. We’re exhausted. We talk about sleeping in the back of the van. Then, I have an idea: let’s go back in time so we can warn people. My friends like that, so that’s what we do.

We arrive at an air force base. I’m in uniform. One of the guys wants to attend a service. He’d died before; this service was for him. He wanted a chance to say good-bye to himself.

So we agree to wait for him while this happens. As I’m standing there, a U.S. flag is ceremoniously folded and handed it to me. I accept it with proper protocol and then give it to another. That was my part.

We go into a briefing room. It’s more like a theater. An officer friend is briefing about a weapon failure. I know what happened because it’d already happened. I push to the front and tell them what happened and convince them that I know the future because I came back from them. I warn them about the growing storm and the need to take action.

The dream ends.

Dual Storms Dream

Howling winds hurled gray sheets of rain across the landscape. Thinking of the dream, I remember endless, gloomy gray. No lights were ever seen. The wind shrieked and howled. There were waves and waterspouts, and there was rain.

We’d been striving to prepare for the heavy, increasing storms, but their cycles sped up, and the storms were more sudden and violent. Many people and places were surprised by the storms’ viciousness and frequency. Others tried taking them in, because, what else could they do?

But a strange disease began sweeping the settlements. Virulent, contagious and deadly, symptoms appeared with little warning. The population quivered with anxiety. Civil cooperation vanished. An era of selfish fighting for survival erupted.

I came into the dream seeing others and racing from them, ensuring I avoided others because I didn’t want to die from the disease. I’d already lost friends and family. My desperation to avoid others drove me to leap off cliffs into crashing waves. Constantly on guard, continually traveling, hoarding food, I felt exhausted.

Then, during a relatively calmer, quiet period, one man called across to me. He was a hundred yards away. I didn’t want him to get closer. I believe he said, “They have a cure.”

Although dubious, I was interested. I didn’t know who they were. The storms lessened. During a period of trudging between buildings in search of food, I saw posters. The posters claimed there was a cure, and gave directions.

I was leery of a trap but made my way in a general manner toward the location of the cure. I saw others. We kept our distance from one another but called across, sharing information, trying to address, who can vet this, and how can it be vetted? More people closed in on the center where they supposedly had a cure. Suspicions kept me back.

The storms finally abated more. Weak sunshine washed the wet land. More people were encouraged to go for the cure.

And I, tired of solitary fight to survive, joined them.

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