9-13-07

I've forgotten half of the dream, but what I do remember was disturbing. At one point, I'm in a house and someone has a video of a place where the inhabitants have captured big cats--lions, tigers, etc. and have tied them on branches that are criss crossed and high up. The cats are then subjected to unspeakable horrors as they are burned alive, like shish kabob, howling and jerking to escape. I see their fur crisp and orifices bleed and now I'm running away from the scene, crying and yelling "No, no, no!"

Then I end up in a room that looks like my parents old bedroom when we lived in navy housing. I hear music and see a lump under the bedcovers moving. The lump comes out at the foot and it's a shiny silver colored rat sitting on its hind quarters. I yell, "Mouse, mouse, mouse!" Someone opens the door and it leaps and I grab ahold of it and I'm gripping its neck as its teeth scrape my skin. I wake up and tell myself it was just a dream.

I don't know about you but whenever I have dreams about animals being tortured, tested on or who are mutated from birth, it signifies "the most horrible that I can think of" i e it is a symbol for terror and my worst fears (I realize that I ought to react stronger to children starving or being hurt, but subconsciously I just don't).

Other people might have another type of symbolism for "the most feared" or "most sickening" but that is my symbol. Does it mean anything else to you? Or is animal torture what makes you react the strongest, for instance, if you have to watch it on television or read about it? Maybe that is the meaning; you are for some reason evoking the worst image possible in your dream, for one reason or other.

On the rat/mouse part of the dream, I can only say that as a cat owner my strong feelings for animals are a bit blunted when it comes to rodents i e I would weep for one kind of animal and possibly be able to kill a mouse without even twitching. I just cannot see how those two parts of the dream comes together.

Thanks Karin,

Yes, animal torture is something that I will not watch, that and children. They are the most vulnerable things on the planet. They are powerless to brutality.

I discussed this dream with a third party and discovered somethings about the inspiration for this dream. I went through a trauma as a child and felt helpless. I wanted out but couldn't escape. I was really sick and in the hospital and given shots--painful shots in my rear end.

I think the silver rat thing is a representation of those shots. The cats could not escape and neither could I. They were fried, and my throat was raw and swollen and I would still scream when the nursing staff in their white coats came to give me a shot.

I scream at rodents too, another explanation of why I saw the rat as the shot (needle).