One morning last week I woke up from a dream. The dream was weird and definitely in color. A certain large male orange cat of my acquaintance was prominently featured. In the dream I had filled a big sparkling white bathroom basin with cold water from the tap. The cat, who likes to put his paw in water and bat it, began doing so and then jumped in. Soon he put his head under the water too. Then, completely submerged, he tried to go to the bottom of the basin in order to breathe through the drain which was gurgling. I tried to pull him out but I could not do so. He remained at the bottom of the basin near the drain and seemed to be clinging to it trying to breathe. I was very upset about the cat in my dream.

Then I woke up and began to mull over the meaning of my dream. I opened my eyes and my long thin dark tan arm reached for the apricot stucco wall in the soft evening light. Whoa! I began to freak out! I do not have a long thin tan arm or an apricot stucco wall. Splat! I was pulled back into my chubbier whiter body and it was still the middle of the night (or at least still dark out) and I could see the outlines of my bookcase where the apricot stucco wall had been. I had experienced a false awakening while dreaming.

This has happened to me before but what stood out about this instance was that during my false awakening I was thinking about my previous dream about the cat. This may be a first for me to be actively thinking about and trying to figure out a previous dream while still dreaming.

Wikipedia defines A false awakening as “a vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep, while the dreamer in reality continues to sleep.”  I often have false awakenings in which I am awake in my real surroundings and get up and do something reasonably mundane and then realize that my physical body is still in the bed. These may also be spontaneous out of body experiences. But I can’t remember being in another body that felt like a real body in another room that looked real in which I was also thinking about my previous dream in a rational logical way.

It so happens that two days later out of the blue the orange cat went into a bad state of being, sitting by himself and hiding. The following day he was observed to be dripping a bloody substance from his rear quarters and was taken to the veterinarian where he was diagnosed with a urinary blockage in his urethra. His bladder was the size of a grapefruit and his kidneys were affected. He stayed at the animal clinic for several days. His condition was touch and go. When he was released back into the custody of his loving owners they were admonished to see that he drank more water and to add water to his food.

It seems to me that the dream was a premonition of the cat’s illness. He was in tip top shape at the time of the dream and did not begin to show any signs that anything was wrong until two days passed. My question is what was the dream telling me? If it was a premonition why was I unable to help? I have never dreamt of this cat before, so why now? Interestingly I feel I might not have remembered the dream if it weren’t for the false awakening.

Advertisements