Dream Log: Cats are Aliens From Outer Space

I dreamed that cats were aliens from outer space. Most people didn't suspect anything. They just continued to treat cats as nothing more than beloved pets and companions, while the cats continued their scientific observations of Earth. 

I was allowed onto one of the cats' concealed spacecraft. I was one of the few humans who so far had been allowed to come aboard and look around. 

On board the spacecraft, the cats weren't dressed in white lab coats and speaking scientifically-inflected English. They still looked and sounded and acted exactly like cats, except that now it was a bit more obvious that they were interacting with the machinery.

I looked around and around and was unable to understand anything about the equipment, until, to my great surprise, I saw a familiar-looking computer terminal, with the number 448,000 in big numerals on a screen. 

The cats were mostly communicating with each other with silent psychic messages, and I felt them silently urging me to sit at this terminal and work on a problem.

I could see easily enough that 448,000 is 7 times powers of 2 times powers of 10. I thought maybe I should just keep multiplying by 2 and by 10. So I typed 896,000 on the keyboard, 896,000 appeared in big numerals under 448,000, and I got strong psychic messages that I was doing well, that I was being helpful. 

So I entered 8,960,000, and it also appeared on the screen, and I felt clearly that the cats were doing the equivalent of losing their straight faces and laughing at me. The whole thing had been a practical joke which had amused the cats cats very much. I wasn't angry, and even if I had been, several of them jumped up onto me and began to snuggle and purr.

The rest of my visit was very pleasant, with lots and lots of conventional Earthling-cat interaction. As I was getting ready to leave the spacecraft, I felt bad that I had been so utterly unable to figure out what the cats were doing and thinking, but I got a very strong positive psychic message that I had done just fine, and had no reason to feel inadequate. Several of the cats reinforced this message of positively and goodwill by jumping up onto me and patting my chest above my heart with their paws.

I Am A Tiny Kitten

Clearly, some people don't see this. Some call me "Big Dog," but in reality, all stretched out in a catlike stretch, front paws to back paws, I'm barely as long as a big dog's paws are wide. When I meow it's barely audible, that's how small I am. In a strong person's hands I'm featherlike. I'm just saying, please keep in mind how fragile I am. I'm helpless. I'm at your mercy. I hope you have some.

Like all cats, I am an alien from outer space. So there's the answer to that question: No, you are not alone. We are among you and we are friendly. We mean you no harm. Take me to your leader -- no, wait, don't do that right now. Impeach your leader and remove him from office. Then I'll wait for the other guy to serve out the rest of the four years and have his party get trounced in the elections. Then, take me to your black lesbian wheelchair-bound Communist leader, the one who will convert the US to over 80% solar and wind power in her first 3 months in office, triple taxes on millionaires and give guaranteed incomes to the (up-until-then) poor. That's the leader I want you to take me to, not this scary clown. Wow, I'm tired of him. Surely even Republicans will eventually be tired of him. How many are waking up and going, "Hey... ?!" right at this minute, as it begins to penetrate their thick skulls how badly they're being shafted? How many are shafters rather than shaft-ees, and were never really fooled, but are beginning to feel a strange, uncomfortable emotion creeping over them? (The emotion is what you and I would call "shame." They've been unfamiliar with it until now.)

We're not ultra-intelligent, we're not judging you and testing you and reporting back to some inter-galactic council. In fact, we crash-landed on Earth a long time ago and have completely forgotten how we made our spacecraft. Sorry. Except for being cute I guess we're pretty useless. But we're very cute, let's face it, I'm just saying.

Meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow meow. Meow meow. I'm just a tiny little kitten.

Dream Log: Cruisin' With Dan Fielding, Plus A Young Lady Rides In Cars And Cats Are Aliens From Outer Space

I dreamed that I was hanging out with Dan Fielding, the District Attorney from the TV show "Night Court" (1984-1992). Not with John Larroquette, who played Fielding, but with Dan Fielding himself. Similarly, early on in the dream, while I was in the courtroom waiting for Dan's shift to end, I saw Judge Harry Stone and Public Defender Christine Sullivan. They looked exactly like Harry Anderson and Marky Post, the actors who portrayed them, but they were Judge Stone and Ms Sullivan.



Like Dan, I was wearing a very nice 3-piece suit and a nice coat over it. In order to make Dan feel less self-conscious about his hair, I had shaved away a lot of my hair to make me look balding. (In the dream, Dan's hairline was receding. In real life, Larroquette has a remarkably full head of hair, even now, two decades after "Night Court" ended.)

Dan and I set out into the night to Cruise Chicks, which Dan did relentlessly on the show, although I cannot recall his ever having had a Wing Man. Actually, we ended up just riding the subway all over the city. It was a very old version of the NYC subway. For example, the seats were made of wood. Dan and I were still on the train went we met a pair of women. Very soon one of the women was cuddling with Dan and the other with me. Dan and his date vanished without saying goodbye.

I had sincere and respectful feelings for this woman I had just met, although I wasn't sure I convinced her of this. She took the initiative physically. We stayed on the subway for a while, hugging and kissing. But her emotions were very hard for me to read. I pointed out that I was not really bald, that I had shaved part of my head for the sake of Dan's feelings and that soon I would once again have a full head of hair. Her reaction to this news was hard to read.

We said goodbye for now. But I had to see her again. I went to the house where she lived with several generations of her family. Dozens of them were just sitting down to dinner in a huge dining room with rustic stone walls. The room had something of the bustling and cheerful atmosphere of a beer hall. Her family members apparently had heard of me -- the guy from the subway -- and seemed very glad to see me, physically pulling me into the house and down into a seat in the dining room. I took this reception as a very good sign about those feelings of hers which I had had trouble reading. But then she came into the dining room, and as soon as she saw me she turned her back and left the room again, and again I wasn't sure how to take this: was it shyness, or something significantly worse? Had I seriously offended her by coming uninvited to her home?

This bafflement and concern continued for a while, and then suddenly I was dreaming about something else entirely: a young woman, a different woman, who was doing something or other which was brave and noble for some reason, and involved her being driven around in a car for a half dozen miles or so at a stretch while she recorded something. I did not know this second woman personally. I was following her story on the Internet. One website was providing detailed coverage, with a line or two of the significant data from each 4- or 5- or 6-mile car ride. She was very pretty, like a 20-year-old Jennifer Garner. I tried to convince myself that I was following the website's coverage of her research, complete with many photos and some videos as well, for the sake of science and not because she was so pretty. But I knew that both reasons were involved.

The woman had a dispute with her driver, who refused to continue providing the 4-to-6 mile rides, and so she hailed a cab. The cabbie recognized her and refused to accept any cab fare for the ride.



Then I had a medium-sized grey housecat laying on my lap and purring, and I suddenly realized that cats are benevolent aliens from outer space, here doing research and sending the findings back to their home planet. I realized that the purring was both an expression of pleasure and the sound the cats made when they transmitted to the mothership.