To Sleep, Perchance to Dream. Ay, There’s the Rub

I consider myself a bit of a sleep connoisseur, in that I do it often, I enjoy it, and I do it often. And while I sleep, I of course, dream.

Yes, cats dream! You think after leading the exciting and enigmatic lives we do while awake, that we would simply settle for empty nothingness while we are unconscious?

“So, what do you dream about?” you query.

All sorts of things. Much like humans, cat’s dreams can be vivid or vague. They can ring out crystal clear in our conscious, and they can quickly retreat down the mouse hole of forgotten epiphanies. Some seem so real, I can taste the tuna on my lips when I wake up, and others are so surreal that I swear I must be human.

One time, I dreamed that my tail was a giant, living fish, and that it kept trying to drag me back into the water with it. Half way through the dream I wondered, “Am I a cat with a fish for a tail, or am I the mutated, cat shaped, suddenly self-aware tail of a fish?” Then I woke up and realized the irony in the fact that my favorite food exists in an environment that I was never intended to enter.

I had another dream where I was walking down a long, bright, warm corridor. On the floor of the corridor were all sorts of fun, interesting objects that begged to be rubbed up against. Protruding from the walls were long, human arms with soft, welcoming hands. As I navigated this corridor, the hands would reach out to scratch my ears, rub my shoulders, and get that spot right under my chin. I woke up to find that I had fallen asleep on a pile of cat-nip.

Once, I even dreamed I had claws on my front feet. Can you imagine? A cat with claws. Crazy.