I know my cat dreams. It isn’t just that she’s a mammal, with a brain much like mine. It’s because sometimes, as she sleeps on my lap, her paws twitch and she mumbles that chirping, chattering sound she makes to birds on the other side of the window.

So she probably dreams about birds in the garden. What else do cats dream about? I imagine she dreams about other things that happen in her life. Maybe she chases lizards, or washes herself, or eats delicious wet food.

Does she dream about things that haven’t happened? The vacuum has never left the closet of its own accord and chased her around the house, but does she have nightmares about that happening? Or does imagining things that haven’t happened, even in dreams, require some quality that cats’ brains don’t possess? Maybe she has bad dreams of going to the vet, of being poked with small pointy sticks, but none in which inflated garbage bag creatures pounce on her in the kitchen.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

What is it like when she gets woken up mid-dream, perhaps by some over-affectionate human wanting to pat her? When I wake up abruptly from a dream, sometimes it’s hard to shake the feelings I had, especially if I was angry at someone, or very upset about something that happened in the dream. And I know that it was a dream, and know the difference between dreaming and reality. How do cats know the difference between a dream and reality? Or does it not matter–does whatever they felt in the dream get immediately replaced by their awareness of their waking surroundings, so that the dream fades from thought almost instantly?

What is it like when cats dream? I can only guess.

Till next post.