phthalombrage | (no subject)

I just saw a picture of an angry cat and realized that I had had a rather disturbing dream last night. My dreams are always weird, but this bothers me.

I snuck into my neighbor's house at night, and abducted six cats and carried them across my lawn, setting them down in my living room. Nobody lives in the house next to me, and the house in my dream was different. It was a way nicer house than anything in my neighborhood. White stucco walls, lush green lawn. There was an arching portico in the front and a big multipaned window on the door. Light came from inside even though nobody was home. I don't remember if my house looked like my house on the outside- I don't remember the screen door being there- but it felt like it was mine and I knew it was mine and it looked the same on the inside.

I walked through the strange rooms... they had a big white refrigerator and an island in the kitchen. And then I began gathering the cats. I found them under beds in comfortable guest bedrooms, behind green easy chairs. I must have taken over at least a few armloads of them...

After my caper, I took a little tour around the house and saw the little cats everywhere and felt pleased with myself and my empire of cats. A grey one and a brownish one with spots looked at me from behind a blue armchair. I got out a bag of shredded cheese from the refrigerator and spilled it over two adjacent plates, momentarily worried about whether the cheese had yet expired, but dismissing it because they were cats. Two cats jumped up onto the table (round, a light ash wood) and began eating. Then more started flocking in and I was worried. I felt guilty about stealing my cat's food, thinking my mom would be upset, and didn't find it initially where it usually is, in its bin. Then the bin somehow appeared and I was relieved, but there were two bags of food. So I set down two improvised cat dishes on the floor and took a scoop from each bag of food (both were open and rolled down) putting one kind into each dish. Cats jumped down and swarmed around them. Then I felt like I had to leave. The last thing I looked at was a microwave oven.

I wandered around outside in the dark (one streetlight at the end of the street, no cars going by)looking for someone, dunno why. Maybe I wanted to show them the cats? I had an idea of who I wanted to see, but I was worried that he/she had already left. I saw the person shortly thereafter. Was wearing a kind of eerie nightdress/t-shirt and some kind of pantslike garment, longish hair, but was walking with a guy in a brown jacket that I was afraid of. So they walked away in the dark and I hid behind a parked car and watched them and did nothing.

Then I got this consuming feeling that the people next door were coming back and would want their cats back. Also that I was being watched. So I tear open the front door of my house and begin looking for the cats, but to my chagrin, they're all hiding. I pull one from behind the chair, and now it looks kind of pissed off. I searched all the cat hiding places where I used to find my cat when I was little. I pulled one from under the kitchen sink and it kind of hissed at me. I released them inside the other house and ran back over to my house. I couldn't find see any more cats. I didn't want to go into my room because I didn't want the door to be open when people were at my house even though I don't like to close doors and I didn't want to be found there and people were gaining on me, they knew somehow, and I remembered there was a grey cat that I hadn't found. I pulled a whitish cat from behind my door and it disappeared? because I reached under my bed and I felt like there were three cats there and I saw fur and I felt fur and they moved away from my hand and one of them hissed but I don't know if I got them all and I kept saying to myself I know there were six cats there? Weren't there? Did I get them all? and I tried to remember the places I had found them and it was this horrible torturing feeling and I woke up.

I'm thinking it stems from last night... the two video class acts were about stealing stuff.
variety show, julie martin in an orange sweater sniffing sasha's shoulder and telling her she smelled good after the bonfire, standing awkwardly behind an ugly chair squinting into lights with no idea what to say to make it plausible, mr. percival mouthing backup vocals, baby spice who just looked like valentina spice, my mom dancing like a retard and speaking in the flutelike butterfly voice she uses when she lies to us (or conducts transactions by telephone), the projector did not in fact smoke or catch fire (Froman: hardcore) but instead refused to turn on because it is cheap, wall-climbing and descending (the latter is more difficult), mom-choreographed dances (although the tap one with about three steps in it was actually done by jodi's zero gravity school... haha), sunday suit doing the kyphotic ferret dance and making cacophonous noise and making fun of themselves "I got sunshine... she's using it", close your legs - mr. wiley's in the audience girl, the girl at whom we barked because her voice sounded like that of a howling dog, calliope likes the greek names better (she would), and petra and justin were good, but the plantains got brown and stinky... and they died (bowed head, red flash)
in contrast to the
friday night was supposed to be a better show but bad things are more interesting, white-clad ridiculous second grade dancer (the song is still stuck in my head), boss' wife on the terrace (he was late, as usual), little kid with a violin that every time he seemed like he would stop playing, had another tilt and screech of the bow in store, who the hell wears pointe shoes on asphalt or concrete? , bad Targetlike popcorn, keaton shook my hand and was surprised/disgusted that it was wet (also pruny, which he probably couldn't feel) bouncing little sister (and Others), four hour long walk in rainy conditions with chloe during which I collected powerade caps for my mom (We played on both playgrounds, stepped in light grey puddles in the shell lot, thought we saw a dog in the woods (it was long and brown, but short) but something we thought was a scary headless animal was actually a palmetto leaf) and a bunny! hopping near the portables, taylor schwimmer coming up the spiral into the tech booth and then the whole booth smelled like taylor schwimmer sweat (dan curhan did the spotlight gag), taking kelli and cecily and katie to go see the creepy man with the glue gun and taking a picture of him and pirate dreams (leah agrees, Grammar Games was "pretty much awesome") of the night before.
I found the SOaP reference (there was one!). The thing on the cover of the program looks like vultures, but has hanging tails like the impossibly positioned tails of the soap snakes.

Then josh had no ride and brian didn't want to ride with mom and I wanted to show them the paper that I brought with me and they didn't read or really care about, but McDonalds was closed so I went to Checkers. Service was slow and no one was behind me, so I turned off my car in the drive-thru. Brian asked for a refill because he drank most of his root beer while waiting for his food, and therefore he wouldn't have any root beer left to drink with his food. They obliged. We went across the parking lot and set the food bag down on a bench with an empty marlboro box on it, eating the warm, slimy, greasy food and watching the rain drip from the checkers umbrellas on the other side. It was very convenient. we did not get wet, and there was a shopping cart and a trash can and you could ride the shopping cart over to the trash can if you wanted to (we did not). But there was a painting store with a disheveled carpet in front of the door, and soon a light black cat appears and sits down between the doors. There was a little toy mouse next to it that looked like a severed piece of tail. I wanted to feed it a spicy french fry through the crack in the door but I had already eaten mine and Brian wouldn't let me give it one of his. So we dropped off josh, and his tesso kitty was inside the screen porch, puffed out and looking like she really badly wanted to get in, safe from the wet rain. I picked her up and josh said it looked like she wanted in and I knew that but he didn't open the door yet and I forget who did, but tessie ran inside and then so did josh.

There was a little white kitten once, when the deck was in the back of our backyard, that I found wandering about in the grass. I was nice to it and lured it to me and it let me pet it, and when it seemed like I could pull it off, I picked it up and took it inside. It ran into the space next to the stove. My mom fed it once and it was fun to watch it try to eat the hard food with its little kitten mouth, but she put it out onto the porch. Sometime in the night she let it out into our yard without telling me and let it get killed. I don't know how, but it's dead by now.

Why do I like cats?