Cat and Mouse

I dreamed about mice last night. Well, more accurately, I dreamed that I had a cat. To be specific, I dreamed that I had just adopted a cat, much to my husband’s dismay. It was an adolescent cat, not quite kitten but not quite full-grown cat. And in my dream, the teenage cat caught a mouse on his very first day living in our house. And just as I was gloating about the brilliant usefulness of this cat who would be both a delightful and hilariously entertaining companion and a merciless exterminator of unwanted rodents, a herd of mice came skittering out from under the refrigerator, running in terror from our new feline enforcer. And then I woke up, having died of horror (in the dream, of course). 

“Herd” isn’t the right word, is it? Well, it’ll have to suffice for our purposes, because I’m not looking up the correct word for a teeming, writhing mass of tiny rodents such as I encountered in my dream last night, and which has continued to disturb my waking thoughts for much of today. 

*****

I don’t really remember my dreams all that often. Sometimes, I wake from a dream, retaining a few of the details for just a few minutes before I fully emerge from sleep and get out of the bed, by which time I have usually forgotten the dream or even that I remembered it in the first place. I awaken screaming sometimes but seldom recall the details of the nightmare. Was I running from a man with a dripping knife? About to be mauled by a bear? Falling from a great height? Who knows? When I do remember a dream, really remember it, it’s of the creepy or weird variety, populated with hideous creatures, like mice. 

*****

I get migraines, but luckily for me, they don’t come very often. Maybe three times a year, I get a headache that’s bad enough that I wish I could just lie still in a room without light or sound. I had one of those headaches yesterday, and when it finally released me from its vise-like grip, I was drained but euphoric. It was as if someone had suddenly relieved me of a small load of cinder blocks that I’d been carrying on top of my head unawares. Everything felt lighter. I turned my head this way and that, marveling at the lack of pain. And then I went to bed and dreamed about herds of mice. I don’t know if these two things are connected. Maybe I’ll report back. For today, my head is unencumbered. For tonight, I hope my dreams will be unpopulated, or at least unremembered.