Visions in the Dark

This is the first of three dreams I had on September 21st, 2009.


Dream starts off with me walking along a country road just outside of my home town of London, Ontario. It is pitch black night and I cannot see anything yet in the dream I am familliar with the area and can find my way in the dark. About half a mile from the city limits is a no-kill cat shelter which sets out live traps to capture stray cats along the highway. It is to these traps that I am heading because in the dream I saw one of them with a cat in it during the daytime and I am going to rescue the cat. It is a Saturday and because the shelter is closed on the weekends the cat will have to stay in the trap until Monday - which I think is cruel and I already have a cat at home so I am confident, and more than happy, to have another cat. And because the traps are so close to the edge of the city, where I live, I can walk to them in a short amount of time. Because it is not too cold of a night I set out wearing only my pajamas and running shoes.

When I get to the no-kill shelter (which sits on a small incline next to the hightway) there is a single porch light on the outside which offers a little illumination but otherwise I spend a lot of time having to feel around with my hands because it is so dark. I eventually find the trap I am looking for and rescue the cat. I put the cat into my sleeved t-shirt and tuck it into my pajama bottoms so the cat will not fall out. (I have a cat carrier at home and I do not know why I did not bring it with me). The cat is fairly complacent as it does not fight or scratch me and only wants to stick its head out of the t-shirt neck hole to breathe or look around. I start walking back towards the city but I soon here a car coming and I scramble up the ridge and hide by laying down in a ditch at the top of the ridge. I am afraid that if someone saw me outside along the country road at night that they would call the police and I would get in trouble.

The car passes and I continue on my way again. I come across another of the live traps near an overpass and realize that there is another cat in it. I rescue the cat and put it in my shirt and start on my way. Again I can hear a car coming and I hind under the overpass to avoid being seen, though I am eager to get home becuase it has become ackward to carry two cats in my shirt, not because they are fighting me or themselves, but because they both want to stick their heads out of the shirt hole and there is only space for my own neck and one of the cats. I am worried that the cat stuck at the bottom of the shirt will be hurt by the other cat ontop or will suffocate. I hurry on my way and reach the city limits in no time. Unlike in real life, the city urbanized immediately past the city limits sign and there is a small park that covers one block, a gas station and convienience store on the next block, followed by town houses and three storey apartment buildings. After some houses on the fourth block are some more three storet apartments on the fifth block and it is there that I live.

Unfortunately outside one of the houses on the fourth block are two guard dogs who live in cages that they can escape from when intruders are present - or to pester people walking along the sidewalk. The dogs, one large and on puppy pitbulls, start chasing me because they can smell the cats, which start to freak out inside my shirt, and I have to run. It starts raining quite hard. I am forced to run past my apartment and too a friend's place because I know they will be home and awake at this time of night and will be able to let me in quickly. It turns out that she is standing on the sidewalk outside of her apartment, in the rain. She quickly lets me inside. I don't know the young woman in real life but in the dream we are good friends. In her apartment I get to see the cats for the first time since being out of the dark and I discover that the bigger one is completely black with yellow eyes like my cat at home while the other is a a smaller, thinner spotted calico with brown eyes. I wait for a while to make sure the dogs are gone then head home. Some how I have acquired another cat which I have to hold in my arms because there is no more room in my shirt.

At my apartment I discover that the third cat is another yellow eyed black cat and for some reason I believe that the two black cats I found are related to my cat (Zrinyi) and they are all brothers and sisters. I find some extra food dishes, put them out and fill them with food. I also find another bin to put some extra cat litter in and put that out also. To my surprise the four cats get along very well, even with Zrinyi, who has never been fond of other cats before. I leave my apartment and head back towards my friend's place. It is still raining but it has slowed down and become softer and I am still in my wet pajamas but it doesn't bother me. The sun begins the rise and the sky lightens a little.

I walk past a small strip mall and in the parking lot I see the spotted calico cat I found before in the parking lot, but instead of having two brown eyes it seems to have one single green eye in the middle of it's face. Even though it looks like a cyclops I know it is the same cat as before and I wonder who the heck it got out of my apartment. When I first approatch it the cat runs away but all I have to do is crouch down and use soft words to coax it back to me. When I pick it up the cat blinks and its single green eye disappears and the two brown eyes return. I am perplexed for a bit but hurry home because I fear the other cats have escaped like this one did. Thankfully they have not and I put the spotted calico down and it goes over to one of the food dishes and begins munching away happily. I find the three black cats curled up on my bed contentedly sleeping together which adds further credence to my believe that they are all related.

Even though it is still raining and not completely daylight yet I set back out with the intent to check the live cat traps again because for some reason I believe that I will find more cats there. This time I take the cat carrier with me but I am still in my pajamas. I try to sneak quickly past the houses with the pitbulls but no-joy. I can hear police car sirens in the backround as the little dog merely barks at me but the bigger on bites me on the hand. I run a bit and the dogs eventually turn back towards their home. It stops raining when I am at the intersection of the convienence store and the small park when I look down to my left and see two police cars parked down the street. I get spooked and turn back but hesitate because I don't want to run into the dogs again. I consider for a moment what to say to the police if they stop me before starting towards the country side again.

Suddenly there is a lot of people in the streets as I walk past the small park. I am crossing one road when I city bus comes out of nowhere and nearly misses me. I see a large sign on the edge of the park with a bus schedual on it and go over to see if any buses go down the road where the cat traps are but because none do I start on my way again. I am at the last intersection before the countryside and can hear a car radio playing "We Will Rock You" by Queen and notice that a lot of people on the side walk are singing along. I am crossing the intersection when I see a moving van that has precariously stacked trailers, one on top of the other, seven high.

The dream ends there.

The main character is me, but I do not look like me. I looked like a young boy with short blond hair, wearing a dirty grey jumpsuit and a bright orange scarf, and I was very thin. Every time I mention myself in this dream, picture the aforementioned description of the young boy.

No long before this dream I had to euthanize my first cat, Bambi, because she was very sick. I find it interesting that my memories of her, and the pain I feel from losing her, appear in the dream - but she does not actually appear herself. I also acknowledge my memories and feelings of her in the dream but it does not become lucid when I do so.

Picture of my cat, Bambi:


The dream took place in this beautiful, lush back-country that bordered the ocean with huge rocky cliffs. There was four areas to this place: a flat, grassy field that lead to the cliffs; a lightly forested area that was "hilly"; a farmhouse and country road on the otherside of the lightly forested area; and a heavier forested area that bordered the other three areas.


The dream starts off with me inside the farmhouse, tidying up rooms and packing my belongings because I was supposed to leave that place for good for some reason, though my heart was reluctant to go, because my memories awere in that farmhouse. It felt especially painful because my cat, Bambi, just died and I kept finding cat toys and other things that would bring up memories of her. There are other people there cleaning up as well, but I cannot remember specific descriptions about them. There was a middle-aged man, a young girl, and a young boy who was similar in age as I appeared in the dream.

Eventually I went for a walk because my heart ached for Bambi too much. I cannot remember now how in the dream I got there, but suddenly I was at the cliff overlooking the ocean. The cliff edge was very steep and must have been hundreds of meters above the sea level; it was one heck of a long way down. I cannot remember how or why now, but somehow I got too close to the edge and I slipped over. I grabbed a handful of grass that grew on the edge and it held me up (which totally wouldn't happen for real, but whatever). I screamed for help but I knew no one could hear me. I struggled for a bit and at first I was convinced that I was going to fall. I thought of letting go for a moment, because if I died then I would get to see my cat again, but somehow I found some sturdy handholds in the rock and pulled myself up onto the cliff top and to safety.

I laid there for a long while before gettting up and wandering along the cliff's edge (but far enough away so I wouldn't fall off again) and I came across some stray cats playing and lounging around near the cliff's edge. I pet them for a while and thought of my own cat before walking to the heavily forested area. On the way I kept running into stray cats and I wanted to believe that if I found out where they were coming from, I would find my cat Bambi, still alive. There were many strays that looked like her (gray, stripped tabby) but none that were her.

In the heavily forested area I came across a large hollow tree that many of the strays seemed to live in. I became worried about them because I was going to leave this place soon and there would be no one to take care of them. I wandered out of the forest and back to the farmhouse. I explained to the three DCs about the cats and they told me to stop worrying about it. Just then a large truck pulled up in front of the farmhouse and some construction workers got out. They worked incredibly fast and put up a chainlink fence around the farmhouse and the large hollow tree in the forest. I asked them what they were doing and they said the next people who were moving into the farmhouse were Veterinarians and wanted to make sure the stray cats were safe.

It was a great relief for me to know that the cats were going to be taken care of, and I hung around until all of the construction was done (including an extension on the farmhouse that was going to be a cat hospital), and this seemed to allow me to accept that my cat, Bambi, was gone and I could leave without regret or sadness.

Just at the end of the dream, as I was walking towards the car that would take me away from that place, I turned my head and saw a black bear by the edge of the heavily forested area. The middle aged man was there as well and he was ignoring the bear, which was ignoring him as well, and since I did not sense and danger I ignored the bear as well. The dream ended there.