Hi, I wanted to ask you about another dream, but I forgot…

First off, don't expect to get an interpretation that fits your personal unconscious mind from a dream dictionary. How does imagining that fluffy white kitten make you feel? Start with that. Then ask yourself this: How would I react differently if it was not a fluffy white cat but a scrawny mixed-color uncared for cat?

Since you don't rememgber anything else, all we can work with is this one portrait of a momentary symbol offered to yhou for your nourishment.

Cats have been distrusted by some Christian sects; they've been trusted guardians of sacred scrolls in Buddhist temples. Adult cats bring a self-sufficiency and untamable hunter instinct into a human household. I know, because we have a black cat we got as a kitten from the humane society 16 years ago, and he's now an old man. But I started raising Goulding finches and then 4" tall parrotlets (or "Pocket Parrots") in 2005, and Bagheera (Jungle Book) has personally dispatched aat least 5 of each of these birds.

So how would you react differently if the cat that appeared at the end of a hallway was fluffy-haired but an adult instead of a kitten?

The best tools that we have for finding out what this dream image means to/about you is 1. your spontaneous imagination, because imagination is the closest link between waking consciousness and dreaming consciousness, and 2. my storehouse of previous cat dreams from other people, my wife etc, and 3. your own storehouse of cat stories, in folk tales, children's books (does your daughter have a cat in one of her storybooks?--she's your own kitten), world mythology, common everyday phrases and sayings that you've heard, or just know without hearing. I don't mean to spend half an hour on this dream, but I think we'l get something unexpected out of it if we try. Give it a shot on those questions and tell any cat stories that pop into mind. Is the kitten unrelated to the dreamer in the dream (unaware of you)? Or does it (she? or he?) appear to need some caring from you?

So the kitten is far away but still inside of a building--your own home or not?

Let's try on the kitten as a distant part of yourself, or slightly possible as a comment on your daughter's relationship to you. As a part of yourself, the kitten doesn't have a gender, is well kept and sweet looking but not alluring to you. Do you have a part of yourself that is sweet and fluffy but keeps its distance from everybody? Keeps watching everything, but doesn't want any close contact--which is a bit of a surprise, because kittens usually bring out the mother-instinct in both men and women.

Is there something going on in reality or in your mind that could be like that pretty sweet kitten not wanting any caretaking and letting you know that with its eyes? That's called the "dream trigger," and that's a first clue to what the dream is commenting on in your life at the time.

The second major clue-finding question is: What is the most surprising aspect of this moving but unchanging moment? What surprises ME most is the "sweet" kitten's significant look: "You can look but you can't come closer or touch me." Is something in your life signifying that to you, especially you yourself in the way you're keeping your distance from other things in your world?