That's what I dreamed about last night. No clue why -- apparently that was just on my subconscious mind's agenda.

The dream(s) featured a momma cat and a kitten, in two different situations -- and in both situations, they were in need of rescue. In one of these cases, the cats were lying stretched across a fairly busy road, and I was sure they were dead. The mother lay in the center of the road with the kitten stretched out in almost the same position right behind her. I stopped my car in the dream (which was not my big Buick but some little hatchback deal that I've never owned) to move them out of the center of the road. This is something I've done occasionally in real life. I can't stand to see the corpse pounded flat as car after car often intentionally swerves to hit the dead cat. (I'd have called the dream a nightmare if I experienced any of the distressing emotions that would have ordinarily accompanied these situations, but I didn't. My dream-self just rolled with the events and kept plodding along stoically.)

Anyhow, when I picked the mother cat up, she was good and dead -- stiff, unmoving, eyes open and glazed, etc., I put her over on the side of the road -- in a flower bed in the front of some person's yard (possibly the person to whom the cats belonged in the first place), resting her head on a clump of forget-me-nots. But then I picked up the kitten, and he was still alive -- though not very responsive. I checked him out and didn't see any obvious trauma -- no blood, no apparent broken bones. But I was afraid that maybe there was internal damage, since he seemed so out of it. So into the car he went, and my dream-self started navigating the small town I was in to find a place to get him fixed up.

This being a dream, of course, the small town was my hometown of Hinckley, and yet I was a stranger here -- I did not know where the veterinarian's was, and I spent some time driving around, worrying in that detached emotional way of this particular dream, that the kitten might die before I got him proper help.

And, because this was a dream, the vet's place had somehow been incorporated into my old church, and they wouldn't let me on the grounds without an armed escort. Not to protect me, mind you -- but because I was seen as a suspicious character who had no proper business at a Catholic Church.

Not quite sure where that last bit came from -- or, at least, why it popped up in this specific dream. I've never felt particularly guilty for leaving that faith. Though I suppose I have felt judged by many of the people who remained behind.

As for the kitten, turned out he was only stunned and mostly in mourning for his mother, so I paid to have him fixed up and adopted out. Happy ending, more or less.

Ironically, the day before, I had attended a funeral for, not cats, but people. A friend's son died unexpectedly, and I went mostly to comfort his mother, whom I've known for over a decade. I suspect this is where cats and Catholics got all tangled up in my brain, since she had started out Catholic and many folk in attendance were Catholic (she's Pagan now, which is how I first met her -- I served as her priest back when I was running the cross-quarters for the Circle of the Violet Flame). I felt a little out of place at the funeral at first, since I only knew her and I was of a different faith than the vast majority of people in attendance (and there were a lot of people there -- her son was a very popular and well-loved guy).

The only other time I'd mourned a passing with her was for her cat, Bogie, whom we both adored (a very personable Siamese named after Humphrey Bogart because of his deep, gravelly cat-voice).

Funny how it was the son who lived in the dream, mourning his mother, and not the other way around. The cats were very clearly gendered in my head.

I suspect a psychoanalyst would have some fun interpreting this one, in light of the funeral yesterday.

--M