The Joys of Herding Cats

Ugh, this week was a mess. I had to wake up to an alarm three days in a row, due to various doctor appointments and such. Wednesday morning was the worst. I had to get up at 5 AM (I work nights, so usually I wake up around 8 AM), wrangle the cat, and drive her across town to the cat dentist for her follow up appointment.

Finding the cat was the hard part. On Tuesday Kara heard us mention the vet, and she spent the next 24 hours in hiding. Smart cats are a pain. Wednesday morning she was hiding under the couch. This was probably the most annoying place she could have hidden, because our house is so cramped, that it’s difficult to move the couch. We had to move a few other pieces of furniture to get the couch away from the wall, only for Kara to hide under another piece of furniture.

I thought I had her, and then she just sort of dissipated. I blinked, she turned into a dust cloud. It’s a cat thing. We spent the next half hour tearing the room upside down looking for her. Upending furniture, moving various things around, trying to catch our breath. We’re not as young as we used to be, and moving furniture around at 5 AM is not how I like to wake up. I’d closed all the doors in the house so she couldn’t run into any other rooms. But the cat was just… gone.

Finally I pulled open the curtains, and she was just sitting in the window sill, laughing at me. I picked her up and put her in the cat carrier. Usually she fights me on that part, but this time she was fairly complacent. The last few times she went to the vet, I used up half the Band-Aids in the house. This time she growled once, but didn’t struggle or scratch me. I think she’d decided I’d suffered enough. I still wound up bleeding, though. Apparently there’s an exposed nail on the back of the couch, that I scraped against trying to reach her earlier.

It was an easy enough appointment, just a follow up. She’s recovered nicely from her oral surgery two weeks ago. She no longer has any teeth, and we’re still experimenting with finding the perfect wet cat food. When we got home, Kara forgave me as soon as I let her out of the cage. I’m very thankful that she’s caught up on her shots, so this is the last time she has to see a vet for a good while.

Dream: Gators and Beholders

Sometimes my dreams have a semi-lucid, fourth wall quality to them. I'll feel like I'm acting out the dream as if I'm making a movie, and all the characters are just actors. This means that I know I can't really be harmed, so I'm not scared no matter how intense things get. On some level I know every monster is just a guy in a suit, like the ending of Altered Beast.

Last night I was in a swamp, holding an alligator on a leash. The dream's "script" said that the gator was supposed to help me, to lead me to some bad guys like a police dog. But the gator kept biting me instead. Gator's gonna gate, I guess. The bites didn't hurt; it felt like he had Nerf teeth. But it was still annoying, and I kept yelling "No!" at it.

Then the gator ran off, and attacked a small child. It didn't hurt the kid either, but I still had to stop it. I jumped on the gator's head (oddly enough, I had played a bit of "Pitfall!" last night before bed) and it released the child. But then I was so angry that I started pounding on the gator like Ralphie fighting the bully in "A Christmas Story". 

That woke me up, but I fell right back asleep. 

The next dream had sort of a "Snakes on a Plane" plot, but the tone felt more like Alien. I was on a cruise ship, and a bunch of Beholders were loose, attacking the passengers. (If you're not a D&D player, a Beholder looks like a floating head with a single large eye, a gaping mouth, and a bunch of smaller eye stalks that can fire different kinds of magical beams).

But these weren't your typical D&D Beholders. One looked like a giant hand, with eyes on the end of each finger. Another looked like a beach ball, with smaller beach balls on its eye stalks. It could fire more beach balls out of its eyes, which would bounce around before exploding. That scene had a "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" vibe to it, with circus music in the background.

Another Beholder looked 8-bit, reminding me of the movie Pixels. It could summon Atari characters to fight for it, like the helicopter from Chopper Command. (Okay, I played more than just Pitfall last night). The helicopter attacked not by firing weapons, but by landing on groups of passengers. Another Beholder had a very human-looking face, giving it an uncanny valley appearance.

I didn't actually see any of these monsters defeated. I mostly spent the dream running around from room to room, running into different Beholders and watching them attack groups of passengers. The dream still had a movie quality to it - I never really felt like I was in danger, I just ran because it was "in the script". 

Even with all that going on, I still had time to stop and casually visit the ship's gift shop.