Dreaming Cats and Dogs

I had a very strange dream this morning just before I woke up. I have strange dreams all the time, but I felt compelled to write this one down. And share it. I have no idea why. I should apologize now and get it over with: I am so sorry.

It seemed to go on forever, as dreams do, but this is part of it:

It was daytime and I was in a long narrow room crowded with too many beds in it and the covers were all disheveled with pillows and bunched up comforters all over the place but no one was sleeping in any of the beds as far as I could tell and my computer was way over in a far corner sitting on a rickety little nightstand and I wanted to check my email but I had to step over things to get there and it took a long time but finally I did and I sat on a tiny little chair and had to pull out the drawer to rest the keyboard on it but the drawer kept falling out because it didn't fit the opening very well and so I balanced the drawer and the keyboard on my knees but then I saw that the computer wasn't even plugged in and there was no outlet. [Perhaps I'm conflicted about my new lurker status in blogland?]

And then my youngest sister was sitting cross-legged on the bed closest to me, excitedly telling me about a bunch of people who were moving into some previously dying inner city [no idea which city or why my sister would find this exciting] and how fantastic it was with all the wonderful new development and how interesting that these people were almost without exception Mongolian and then she said, "It's such a fascinating culture. Did you know that if a woman has an affair with a married man, she will lie to the wife about it but be completely honest with her family?" [I have no idea whether this is true about Mongolian culture; it was a DREAM.] And all I could think was, Whose family? The wife's or her own? What kind of sentence structure is that? But she didn't answer me because I didn't actually speak and then she was gone.

And then I was across the room and looking at a dark shape moving in another corner sort of under and behind a half-opened door and at first I wasn't sure it was a spider but thought if it was I should probably get rid of it and when I looked closer it was HUGE and thick like a tarantula and no way was I going to do anything with that and I looked around for someone, anyone, who could help get it out of there before it bit someone and they died but there was no one and yet I kept thinking someone was going to die or at least get very sick if that thing bit them but the room was empty and I thought I should keep an eye on it until someone could help me and then there were all sorts of other nasty looking bugs around the spider and then a frog that jumped on the spider and they wrestled a bit before both lost interest and the frog wandered off a ways and sat and stared at me and then as I watched the floor started to turn to soft white sand and all the bugs and the spider and the frog were sinking into the sand until some disappeared and I could barely see the others and I thought, Great, now someone will step on these things and not realize until it's too late.

I heard someone give a contented just waking up kind of sigh and looked around again to see who was in the room so I could warn them because it looked like some of the bugs were moving away under the sand and again it was my youngest sister in one of the beds, a different bed, and she was yawning and stretching and I heard her say, "What a great night's sleep I just had; my back feels so much better," and then I was standing over there and I could see her and she was lying on her back with her shoulders angled off the edge of the bed and her head was resting in the open top drawer of the nightstand, a different nightstand, and I said, "Do you realize your head is in a drawer?" and she replied, "Yes, I put it there," and she had the sweetest smile on her face and she truly did look rested and happy. [I need to call her later.]

And then I was over looking for the spider again and the floor had changed back into a floor with just a bit of sand like it had been tracked inside at a beach house and someone, I think it was The Dog's Favorite Person, came in and saw the spider and said, "This little thing? You're worried about this little thing?" only it had gotten even bigger and he reached down and brushed it out of the corner with his bare hand and right out in front of my bare feet and then laughed and made a fist and smashed the spider, several times, until it was dead. [This is completely out of character for TDFP, who would in real life find a way to put the stupid thing safely outside.] It was a huge mess with spider parts all over the place and there was a ton of clear thick liquid oozing out from what was left of the body, way more than even a big spider could contain, and it kept spreading like it had a life of its own and TDFP was laughing but I was horrified and I had nothing to clean it up with and we followed it out the door and I was trying not to step in it because I was barefoot and then we were in the hallway of my mom's house and the floor was linoleum like it used to be when I was little and the goo was still spreading and I realized it looked just like the stuff I've been putting on the wonder dog's food to improve his joints and I thought, What a waste, that stuff is expensive, and my mom was there with a paper towel and trying to wipe up the mess and TDFP was helping her and they were both laughing which was odd because I'm pretty sure my mom would not be laughing about something like that but they wouldn't give me a paper towel because there were only two and even those had already lost any absorptive qualities and they were just spreading the goo farther along as they tried to wipe it up and then the cat and the wonder dog were there and I thought, How did they get all the way to Minnesota? and they were sniffing the goo and licking at it and then acting very strangely about it.

And then I woke up and the cat was walking up the length of my right arm like it was a balance beam and it didn't feel good [actually it hurt like hell] but I didn't move because she's never done that before and I was waiting to see what she'd do next and she walked right up to my shoulder where she did a graceful little dismount and then came and stuck her nose in my eye and I realized the wonder dog was also standing there on the bed staring at me and sort of quivering eagerly like he was more than ready to go outside and then he shook. Goo.

I looked at the clock and it was seven minutes past the time I usually get up. So I got up. So much for sleeping in on the weekend. And really, with dreams like that, who needs sleep?