Blue_Opossum

Morning of January 1, 1975. Wednesday. (New Year’s Day.)



Summary: Two cats quickly going in opposite directions meet on our Cubitis carport and their movement ceases as they stare at each other until my dream ends. This dream was possibly at least partially influenced by the limerick “There once were two cats of Kilkenny“, as the term “Kilkenny cats” did seem to be in the back of my mind at one point in-dream but was not spoken aloud (though the cats do not fight or even move as in the limerick). A younger neighbor and friend I waited with at the school bus stop on weekday mornings had the first name of Kenny, which may have added to the associations.

It is early morning in Cubitis just prior to the time I would be going out to wait for the school bus on a normal school day and the sun has not fully risen. I become aware that I am going onto our carport at the start of my dream for this reason.

Seemingly out of nowhere, two (unfamiliar to me) cats suddenly approach each other and both assume a stand-off position in our carport near the front entrance of our house, facing north and south. Immediately before I actually see them, I get an uneasy sense of a loud two-layered human-male-like “Ugh!” as if both of the cats had somehow “said” or “exclaimed” it simultaneously, each with a sense of implied disgust at the other, immediately prior to their near-collision.

Time seems “frozen” for seemingly several minutes as the cats stand completely motionless, facing each other from only about an inch apart (nose to nose). I get an eerie feeling that they may somehow have additional human-like attributes (though there is no real evidence for that other than the unvalidated assumption that they spoke).

Soon, at least a dozen (unknown) reporters, both male and female, having donned primarily early 1960s dress styles, appear on our carport as if out of nowhere. They are evenly gathered around, both standing and crouched in a semicircle (open to the driveway), with cameras (a male near the main door seemingly using a Polaroid 185 Land Camera) and yellow notepads with pens (though I briefly notice one female making continuous cursive loops rather than words or sentences). The reporters are gathering around the cats (though not that closely - about a yard or more away) and appear to be ready to plan or begin some sort of television or radio broadcast on the event. The cats do not make any other sounds and continue to remain motionless throughout the rest of my dream. I still feel a growing and somewhat unpleasant eeriness that they are “more than cats” and I almost expect something else to happen but nothing else does. There is a strange mythical awareness that neither cat will ever move again.

Analysis from my primary standpoint: This seems to be a play on the “old year” meeting the “new year” face to face or “blocking” potential progress into the new year with any issues of the previous year, almost in a mythical sense; thus, the in-dream uneasiness and “waiting for something to happen” even though a new year is basically just a continuation of the prior day. My family did not have a Polaroid 185 Land Camera but the camera has a feature that resembles the bellows of an accordion, which my father was well-known for playing and writing popular polkas and waltzes for. The reporters had a very vague association with cartoon characters on “The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour” though they did not really appear cartoon-like in any way in my dream. The “reporters” are there perhaps to “record” my progress in my path into the new year and my otherwise blocked passage into the new day, one cat being “of me”, the other a potential rival with opposite opinions, perhaps; likely a classmate I have conflict with.

Analysis from my secondary standpoint: What people have seemingly failed to see throughout the entire history of so-called dream “interpretation” (as I have never seen much evidence of it in commercial publications) is that certain types of dream events often reflect the dreaming process itself. In this case, it would be my dream self being “blocked” from the knowledge of the holiday, part of me wanting to wake up in thinking I have to get up for school (though I do not) and another area of my (dream-self’s) mind saying “Hey, you can sleep longer today, what’s your hurry?”. Of course, dreams are typically multilayered, sometimes with so many layers, it sometimes takes years for certain facets to reveal themselves.