This has been bugging me all day. Several months back, my cool, superstar tabby, Lenny, died rather suddenly due to a hopeless medical condition. Last night I dreamt that he didn’t die, he’d just been forgotten.
I dreamt looked outside the sliding glass door and there was a very skinny, shivering Lenny out in the cold (he was never an outdoor cat) and he was so hungry he was eating a twig. All these months, I’d been feeding Squiggy and taking care of him, but Lenny had slipped my mind. In the dream I was horrified, let Lenny in, dumped food in his bowl and then sort of went on all fours to try to hug him while he ate to try to warm him up, and he purred weakly.
I felt awful and it woke me up all teary-eyed. When Fianceephone got up for coffee and saw me in the kitchen hugging Squiggy, she was downright alarmed by how sad I looked.
Anyone else have any pet abandonment dreams? I was horrible!
The other day I had a dream that my Grandma died and I woke up crying at 3:30 in the morning. I woke up my boyfriend and he comforted me until I could go back to sleep, which he says is a clause in the boyfriend contract.
I’ve never had a pet abandonment dream, but one night mr. spockerel dreamed that his old, old dog Chena was still alive, tethered and curled up in the corner of his parents’ yard while some punk kids yelled at her and threw things at her. He chased them off and tried to go help Chena, but she was so old and in so much pain that she didn’t even notice him, but just lay there and cried in awful sad doggy whimpers. He woke up crying and said in the smallest, most pitiful voice I’ve ever heard from him, “Honey? Wake up, I need you to hold me.”
Pet abandonment dreams are awful. It’s bad enough when a pet dies without dreaming that you’ve done something even worse instead.
My condolences. {{{Swallowed My Cellphone}}}
Yeah, Lenny and Squiggy (the later is a little stinker that is part Russian blue). Lenny was getting pretty old and died last winter, Squiggy is younger, and possibly retarded (no, really, gotta be one of the dumbest cats I’ve ever known).
{{{Swallowed My Cellphone}}} and {{{dream Lenny}}}
I have variations of a very similar dream frequently. I had a house bunny (named, um, Bunny) for almost ten years, most of them in my wonderful little studio apartment in Seattle. She died in 1998, in old age but of a fast-moving cancer. I dream I’m moving back into my studio apartment and I discover that she’s not dead after all, but hasn’t been fed or taken care of properly since I wasn’t there – because I had forgotten about her. Or I have been living there all along, and she’s been hiding under the kitchen sink, neglected. It’s a TERRIBLE feeling.
ETA: kanicbird, this dream seems to happen whenever I think house-y thoughts. It’s not that I’m feeling bad about abandoning someone or something – it’s that my doing-something-to-the-house dreams always seem to anchor to my Seattle place, and Bunny was such an integral part of that place, and my dream has to explain why I haven’t been taking care of her recently.
Nah, there’s not really anything that would parallel that in real life.
Although last week, we change our routine one morning and as a result, we forgot to feed Squiggy his breakfast. I thought Fianceephone fed him, she thought I did… poor bastard. Luckily a neighbor was able to pop in and dump chow in his bowl. Normally it’s really hard to forget because he makes such a fuss, but he must’ve been confused by the routine change too.
Hell, yes, I’ve had several dreams about having “forgotten” to feed a pet for a long period of time. God, what a horrible feeling those dreams give you. Hugs, SwallowedMyCellphone.
That’s really interesting. “House-y” thought like renovations or moving?
My sister has mentioned similar bad dreams in which she went back to visit Mom and discovered that the hamsters we had in high school were still alive (barely) and suffering from having been neglected for… oh, the twenty-odd years since high school!
IIRC, that would have been during a time period when she was doing extensive home renos.
I’ve had them on occasion before, but never for one of the specific, identifiable pets in my life. Like my sister’s hamster dream (she didn’t recognize these hamsters, and we only had two while in her dream there were several). It was more like discovering a large menagerie in the basement and realizing “Holy crap! These birds, gerbils, and hamsters must belong to us, but we never knew they were here! What have we done???” But unlike my sister’s hamster dream, mine were one-offs. Her hamster dreams were recurring.
I’ve always figured it was a random stress dream, like the “late for the final exam you never studied for!” dream, or the “I gotta pee but can’t get enough privacy!” dream, or the “Wait, I’m naked and no one else is!” dream.
But this was the only time it was a specific identifiable pet. It was Lenny.
I’ve had a similar dream, only it was about my first husband (he died). In these dreams, he’s not dead – I just left him in the hospital and went on without him.
I think it’s sorta like what kanicbird suggests – a nagging feeling that we didn’t do enough for them, and some guilt for going on. Not quite survivor guilt, but something like that.
The worst part of these dreams is that I’m asked to choose between my first husband and my second. I always choose the second and that makes me feel even more guilty.
:smack: Well, part of the mystery is solved. Fianceephone reminded me that earlier in this weekend I was petting Squiggy, who is a skinny cat, and had gotten worried. I said: “Does Squiggy look like he’s losing weight to you??”
See, sometimes you can feel verterbrae in Squiggy’s back. For Squiggy, that’s normal. With Lenny that was never the case. He was a portly dude who looked like he had a beer belly. When Lenny started getting sick, he dropped a ton of weight and suddenly you could feel his vertebrae when you pet him. I’ve been a bit hyper-vigilant with Squiggy since Lenny died and had a mini-panic when I had pet him.
Fianceephone thinks that part of what may have inspired the dream. I’d pet Squiggy and it set off the “sick kitty!” alarm bells in my head.
Yep, both. Or, thinking about how to reorganize something in the house.
I have this dream (or its vile relation, the “I gotta pee but all the toilets are filthy and the bathroom is ankle-deep in sewage!” dream) when my bladder gets full but I don’t want to get up. Not as a general stress dream.
This!
Note that when I have a Bunny dream, my first reaction is “Thank Og she’s still alive! *Bunny!!” *… before the “OMG I am a terrible Bunny-mommy for neglecting her so!” reaction arrives.
Bah, I have to quit reading this thread. I almost lost my kitty to a URI last year, well more technically to starvation because he couldn’t smell anything. I cried more times then I can remember while that was going on.
I really find that interesting because in addition to my mini-scare petting Squiggy, we’ve also been doing a lot of re-organizing of stuff in the house. We finished building a shed right before the snow, so now we are finally putting our lives away.
That’s exactly what is was like. An instant of joy, then horrible guilt. Bad, bad human.
I’ve had dreams like that about people–I dreamed once that my family forgot about my (then toddler) little brother, once that I forgot I was married, and once that I had somehow had a baby that I forgot about, and found in a laundry basket.
He woke up crying and said in the smallest, most pitiful voice I’ve ever heard from him, “Honey? Wake up, I need you to hold me.”