If you dream of a ginger cat, it could also mean it infiltrated your dream to persuade you to move to an apartment convenient to its needs. That’s what happened to me.
When offering guidance my dreams come through not necessarily loud and clear, more often like a cryptic crossword clue, which I’ve never had a talent for. Fortunately cryptic dream clues are often accompanied by a feeling, sixth sense or message.
My dreams are frequent and various: recall, processing, healing, psychic, recurring, nightmares, and messages which are usually delivered just before I wake. Sometimes I wake with the dream in my head, or later the memory is triggered. Other times the dream will be hazy, difficult to recall or simply puzzling. I recently I had a mixed mode dream in answer to a request of the Universe for inspiration for a short story. It got me thinking about ways dreams have inspired me.
The ginger cat dream stands out because it’s the reason we came to be at our current apartment, and living with the repercussions. Our beloved Darlington apartment was to be sold and we needed to find another. I looked at real estate rentals online, found a contender a few blocks away, lodged an e-application prior to viewing the apartment. The application required more details than we submitted for our mortgage.
Before I could view the property my sister rang asking for my assistance while she was O.S. to liaise on her behalf with the managing agent of her rental apartment as the tenant was moving out. No problem, I could do that. A few hours later she called back just as I’d been about to call her… I’ve been thinking, you don’t suppose we both said. Talking it over in the evening the G.O. & I both had gut feelings that renting my sister’s Erskineville apartment rather than the other was the right option but the fact her apartment had no parking niggled us with uncertainty. We owned two cars & a motorbike, and coped with a single car space and on-street parking. At Erko there was no car space and oversubscribed demand for limited street parking.
Upon waking the next morning, I said to the G.O. listen to this and tell me what you think… I had a dream I was waiting on the road to the Erko apartment and a ginger cat came up to me, so I fed it some of the hamburger I had and it jumped into my handbag. The feeling accompanying the dream was to go with my sister’s apartment. And that’s all it took. We did. We found car spaces, at a cost, but the proximity to the train line and consequential grime & noise has led us to suspect the ginger cat had his own agenda in commandeering my dream.
A few weeks after moving, I looked from our balcony into the small adjacent park between the street and the train line, and there he was, the ginger cat of my dream. The neighbours knew his story. Ginger was a commitment phobe. His dad was half wild and showed up occasionally – once I’ve seen, his mother disappeared, and brother taken in by another neighbour of whom Ginger was very wary. Ginger had briefly been homed, desexed and tagged but absconded to street life and charity of the neighbourhood. He was well liked, fed and affectionate on his own terms. His routine was to show up in the park most evenings or mornings. One or more of Ginger’s supporters would appear with a bowl of food, and socialise with him. Ginger was happy with pats and rubs even before food. But don’t touch too much and respect his boundaries. Ginger could have come home with any us but he made his preferences sharply clear.
When construction work commenced near the train line, Ginger moved around to the common area between the apartment buildings, where we’d spy him less often but give him a meal when we did. But again footpath construction and workmen disrupted his environment, and we hadn’t seen him since May last year. It doesn’t mean I don’t look. I do. Every day.
Then it happened, when I wasn’t looking, busy chatting. A few days ago, the G.O. and I were walking through the common area between the apartment buildings, and spied a ginger lump in the bushes. There was Ginger Boy – appearing well, wary, affectionate, and a happy recipient of a tin of cat food.
Everyone dreams. The G.O. says he doesn’t dream much. He’s recounted a few dreams to me, mostly about cars, motorbikes or work – things which preoccupy his mind. I’m guessing he dreams more than he recalls. Dreams have always interested me. They’ve been attending my life for as long as I can remember. I trust my dreams and know them well.
I wonder if other people have crazy dreams that impact their waking life and if the effects are as tangible as mine?
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I wish I was a non-dreamer. They are invariably rubbish, not what I would like to dream about, and sometimes frightening. Partner rarely dreams which is just as well, because when he was young he dreamt about a work colleague dying. Told the painter he was working with when he got in to work, and lo and behold at break time, they were told the same person had apparently died the night before from a heart attack. Your ginger cat dream is much better. Perhaps the ginger cat had love in his heart.
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Rather than no dreams, I would wish for you sweet dreams 😉 I have had quite a few convincingly real dreams about people dying but thank goodness none of them have eventuated. I think those dreams are reminders not to lose my connections with those people. My sister had a series of dreams about people dying including me and was worried but felt she had to tell me just in case. It was kind of nice that she was so upset by it. I can’t imagine how awful the experience must have been for Partner. Ginger has a lot of love in his heart – he makes many people in my neighbourhood very happy.
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wonderful post elladee, story and photos of ginger boy 🙂 it is so interesting how we understand the dream language and make choices based on that understanding … or is it a feeling as you said? … i think dreams speak to the whole self … so thrilling to discover ginger was a real living cat reaching out to bring you to Erko!!!
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Thank you. Dreams have always been a part of my landscape but each time I get a clear message and/or feeling it’s special… I never feel like I’m doing this life on my own 🙂 I’m also interested in other peoples dreams and how they work with them, such as your flying dream. Occasionally I get that feeling and can interpret someone elses dream but I prefer to let them do it. Dreams have always fascinated me, and always will 🙂
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me too … i used to keep a dream diary but now only record them occasionally … remembered dreams still seem more vivid than everyday life to me … like other visions … perhaps daily 3D life is subdued by it’s solidity … whereas seeing in wholeness/oneness includes multiple other dimensions ???
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Oh yes 🙂 There are dreams and visions as you say that are far more 3D than any real life experience, in or out of a cinema! Maybe I should have described it as 4D.
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confirms my feeling that the Life is the big one, the bright one, this one is a pale reflection that sometimes frustrates us when we lose sight of the whole 🙂 … that’s the trick isn’t it elladee … stay aware of the whole, the no boundaries, the oneness and omnipresence of life
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You’ve put it into the words I’ve been looking for 🙂
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I love this post – I’m SO into dreams and their meanings! I’m glad the ginger cat was okay (you had me a little worried there for a minute!) 😀
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Thank you 🙂 It was you who got me onto this train of thought about dreams and how they impacted my life, via your post about where writers got their inspiration from.
Ginger had me a little worried also. It’s an interesting thing, I wrote most of this post before I saw him, and had to add the happy ending – I think he had a hand in that. I was so excited and happy to see him still around, and doing ok 🙂
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I love that a dream cat proved itself real later! I have quite vivid, and sometimes very strange, dreams, I think of them as brain defrag, processing recent events or things that are on my mind in an unfettered way!
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I know! It was quite an experience even for me who is used to my dreams communicating tangible messages 🙂 That is a perfect description – I have brain defrag dreams too. They are so arbitrary, there’s no other explanation.
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Dreams are so intriguing. Some of mine are revelations of stuff my waking mind wasn’t able to deal with. Some guided me to things. And some warned of future things. I’ve never dreamed of a ginger cat, but what a cool story. 🙂
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I agree 🙂 I think dreams are good at conveying subconsciously and gently (or possibly not on occasion) stuff our waking minds might be resistant to – good point. It never ceases to amaze, and impress me that our dreams serve to guide & warn. Thanks for commenting – it really interests me 🙂
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Dreams are a really cool place. I’m not sure if we tap into something we can’t when we are awake, but it adds a fun wrinkle to reality to think it’s possible. I’ve found that I don’t dream of people until I’ve grown incredibly close to them. I take it as a good omen when a friend appears in my dream because it means the friendship is strong.
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Although i so rarely remember my dreams, they’ve always fascinated me, EllaDee, particularly when the subject and consequences are similar to those involving your ginger cat. I cannot help but wonder how many time have I, or others, dreamt of our own ginger cat but ignored it. “It’s only a dream,” and went ahead with Plan A. Who knows how many ginger cats we each have left waiting for us in Plan B? Like I said, fascinating.
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Thank you. I know I have dreams and messages I have ignored. Mostly, the dream messages come again and again until I have an aha moment. I hadn’t thought of it like that… I’m now wondering how many times I have dreamt of things that could have been but ignored the signs. I’m writing a post at the moment about other signs I have missed, so it’s likely it’s occured with dreams as well.
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What a lovely story! My dreams are usually about the things I’m stressing about. I wish I could say they help me resolve things, but maybe they’re really just there to prod /me/ into taking some action. Your Ginger is like my Harry – very affectionate but also proudly independent. 🙂
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Thank you. Your dream system works if assists you to process the stuff you don’t want to think about constructively during daylight hours. Sometimes I wish I could just tag stuff “to be done via dreams”, let them get on with it and present me with an outcome 😉 The G.O. says Ginger is like the shed cats they had, similar to how you described Harry, and different to house cats – which made me feel a little more comfortable about Ginger’s lifestyle choices. [Thanks for the follow – makes sense seeing as how much time we both spend on Metan’s blog 🙂 ]
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-grin- To be honest I found myself shocked that I hadn’t been to your site before. And then when I read the post about Ginger I was kicking myself. I think we both assumed we had the connection already. Weird.
Oh and … nice to meet you formally at last!
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Another post WP has chosen not to notify me of.
Dreams, premonitions, who knows, there’s is definitely another sense to our being.
I seem to have times when I dream every night, then go months without, or perhaps, I’ve not remembered them. I’ve never dreamt about cats though, but had plenty of dog dreams, some I have woken from crying hysterically.
I went through a phase of keeping pen and pad beside the bed, to write them down if they woke me up, as by morning they’d become a jumbled blur that I’d forgotten.
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RoughSeas didn’t get a notification either… I’ve had dog dreams too for a while, about my dog Bo, who was with me but everything was weird and I couldn’t look after her – there were usually a few tears. Those dreams passed and the last dream I remember though she just gave me the biggest hug. They are still with us 🙂
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Hey Miss EllaDee, I love trying to decipher my dreams. I was just trying to figure out one of mine over the weekend. I think it has something to do with needing closure on an issue, but I can’t figure out what that issue might be. Thanks for sharing about the ginger kitty and the dream. Very interesting.
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Thank you. If you can’t figure it out another dream will surely follow – until you get your aha moment. Sometimes it takes 3 dreams for me to get the message 🙂
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Dreams! Sometimes I remember them, sometimes I’m confused about whether it was a dream or reality, too often i can’t remember them, though I’m left with a lingering feeling, or ghostly memory … I had my heart in my mouth there for a moment when you saw the “ginger lump in the bushes”, expecting the worst, but instead a joyous can of Whiskas – I wonder how many of his lives Ginger Boy has used, living it rough on the street? 🙂
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Good point – dreams can be real enough that you’d swear they’d happened or elusive but lingering. They endlessly fascinate many of us. Are they ‘just’ dreams or were we actually in that realm…
I like to think Ginger is an old-fashioned cat, not a locked up apartment/house cat but a cat of the people and streets. Where and how he is now appears to be working out for him. Fingers crossed he has a few lucky cat lives left 🙂
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I love your interpretation regarding dreams about people dying – reminders to keep in touch. Its interesting that – as I started to head towards teenhood I remember starting to dream about my mom dying and would wake up distraught until I found her sleeping peacefully in her bed. Now my daughter seems to be going through the same thing. Funny. Almost a detachment sort of thing happening, linked a bit to what you said. A kind of letting go as you grow…
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I’m glad Ginger invading your dreams didn’t lead to a cat-astrophe. It seems that cats can get us to do anything they want. My Oscar did it too, though not by sending himself to my dreams but rather by herding me or pointing in the right direction with a set of claws I knew were shared should I refuse.He at least gave me many a good post.
I’m delighted the move went well and seems to have suited you. The pictures of you with Ginger seem to say that he approves too. xx Hugs xx
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I’ll have to check out your Oscar posts, sounds intriguing, and I’m a sucker for anything catty. Ginger pointed us in the right direction, that’s for sure 🙂
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hey EllaDee first time visiting dreams are from your self conscience or from the future i have dreamed and later remembered when the dreams happened. many times they have come true some of the dreams were disturbing my first wife was one
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Hi Saints, I see you over on Celi’s blog. I agree , dreams some from the our spirit (self conscience) and also from the future, which our spirit has a bit more idea of than our mortal selves 🙂 It’s always interesting after a dream comes true, going oh, that’s what it meant! Thanks for the comment 🙂 EllaDee
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I miss my dreams. As I have gotten older and suffer the vagaries of sleep difficulties I find I don’t remember nearly as many of my dreams. They have absolutely changed my waking life. I married my husband of 30 years due to a series of dreams… literally. I’ll tell you about it sometime! X
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The G.O. and I were friends for almost 20 years before we became an “us”, and he followed me around in my dreams, so I’d love to hear your story 🙂
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Hi Ella, thanks for finding and following my Spanish blog. You should check out my writing blog too at http://www.sandradanby.com. I had a beloved ginger cat for many years – Gatsby – who believed he was human! SD
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Thank you 🙂
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