Abate Cruento

From a certain point of view, things have been kind of strange lately.

On monday morning, my cat came home limping, almost dragging his hind paw behind him. He spent all day in my bed, convalescing. When i got home from work, i spent the rest of my day with him. When it was time for bed, we moved him to his bed in the living room. He was already looking a little better.

This was when the strange things started to happen.
I've always had a rather warped view of the phenomenon we call dreams. To make a long story short, i give what happens in dreams the same importance as what happens in so-called reality. To me, they're just two halves of the same life. Ok, ask me about that again sometime.

Anyway, that night i started having bizarre dreams. One of my brothers had come to visit, and had brought a large dog along. Actually it wasn't even that large, it was just rather unpleasant. I've never really liked dogs. So in this dream i really wanted to see how my cat was doing, but was stopped by this ugly dog who barked at me at first, and then held me rather firmly by the arm with his sharp fangs. I did what anybody else would've done in such a situation: i started to scream. And then my dream went up one level, and i felt a reassuring presence on top of my bed. My cat had somehow gotten past two closed doors to wake me up from my nightmare. His paw reached my hand, and i felt good because if he had made it till here, it meant that he was feeling much better and i shouldn't worry about him.
Then the phone rang, and my dream went up another level.
It was my other brother, calling from brazil, asking for windows 98 registration codes. I was still in my bed, but the cat was gone. I turned the phone off, cursed, and tried to continue sleeping.

When i got home the following day, i discovered that last part was not at all a dream. My brother was on MSN Messenger, and asked me for those codes again. I was rather shocked.

Yesterday afternoon the dreams started again. I was in duino piazza, and saw two beautiful ladies dressed in black approach riding what appeared to be a giant hamster. It turned out to be a capibara. "I've never seen a capibara like this", i thought to myself, before realizing that i'd never even seen a capibara, *period*. So who was i to doubt its reality? It was about one and a half meters tall, fully mounted and the same colour as my cat. College teachers came around it to cuddle it (one member of the administrative staff was in full drag, which didn't surprise me in the slightest. as if you never saw these things happen in duino).

I woke up, went to the living room, and my mother started telling me she had the strangest of dreams...

She was outside old offices, with the cat who had made it down the stairs with great difficulty. She was giving attention to something else, when she heard the cat make strange noises. It was changing its skin, and becoming a rather large lizard.
She was surprised at first, but then she remembered. "oh, yeah", she told herself, "this kind of cat sometimes changes skin!"
So the lizard changed its skin again, and became our cat again. Only much larger.

I wouldn't be surprised if other people i know were having strange cat-related dreams. My theory is that since our cat has had to spend most of its time in a bed, it gets its exercise by going for walks in our dreams.

Ok, now that i've gotten that out of my system, i'm off to take a shower.