Last night I had a dream that I tend to have every once in a while. The location, and people, and all other details change….but one thing remains the same.

I’m going along my merry way…. and then suddenly I become aware that I have a cat. Sometimes it will be a cat that I thought died, or had been given away or something… other times I just realize that I’ve had this cat but wasn’t aware of it until now.

And then I realize there must be a litter box somewhere. I have a little anxiety attack in my sleep as I think about how many days/weeks/months/years???  have gone by without any litter box attention. I search for the box, not wanting to search for it, but knowing I HAVE to.

Usually, it will be as horrible as imagined. Once it was a huge pile of dirty litter making a mountain in my parents basement. Last nights dream was me finding a new litter box, and conveniently finding big box of clean litter in my shoe closet. As I’m scooping, I realize the clean litter isn’t clean. It’s full of lumps, clearly the poor cat was tired of waiting. Last nights dream was probably the least disgusting of my litter box nightmares.

In addition to finding horrendous amounts of filthy cat litter, the whole mood of the dream is kind of dark and angsty. I wake up feeling gross, like I still have dirty litter lurking around somewhere in my subconscious…..

How do I interpret this dream? One person suggested I must be going through a lot of stress, and the dirty litter shows up when I’m the most stressed out. Or you could think that maybe I have a dirty secret……. But I think it’s not as exciting as that.

I used to have cats. I was the only one who scooped the litter box. I was terrified of dirty litter, scooped it daily, and would freak out if I left it for anyone else to do and it wasn’t done.

I think I’m scarred from my fear of having a dirty litter box. And that sucks because although that made me extra attentive to it in real life, I’m still suffering for it in my dreams. 😦