Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Dreaming of pets
This happens to me regularly: I’ll dream of neglected pets. Call it unresolved guilt; I still wonder whether I could have or should have done more for the pets I’ve owned who have died on my watch. Snakes don’t handle big moves, nor do frogs. Lizards and frogs often have narrow climate requirements.
In these dreams, I’ll find cages with forgotten pets in a back room I don’t often check. Last night, I was trying to clean a cage in which I had added way too many species. There were poison dart frogs and anoles, a Chinese water dragon, a dumpy frog. While I was cleaning the cage, the lizards kept trying to make a break for it. The water dragon leapt out, I grabbed his back (taking care not to grab the notoriously detachable lizard tail) and some of the skin came off in my hands. In horror I examined my lizard, who was in obvious pain, trying to decide whether to suture the wound, dress it, or give it up and euthanize. I dressed it.
Toward the end of the dream, I noticed two snakes poking their heads out of the cage’s substrate: a red-tailed boa and an emerald tree boa (which we’ve never owned). Long forgotten pets who had somehow survived, possibly by munching on our other pets.
In real life we take care of our animals, of course, but in these dreams I am often guilty of unthinkable callousness: I have left cages without food or water for weeks or even months, only to discover that my pets have grown, reproduced, thrived without my help. No connection with reality, in other words. In the real world, some pets fail no matter how much effort I put out (like my two water turtles, purchased last year, who refused to eat anything I put before them).
We have always kept pets. The morality of keeping pets has always interested and troubled me. Once a pet is in the pet store, he’s already a captive. Am I doing a favor by buying him, knowing I stand a better chance to do right by him than the little kid with a passing whim? Or does my purchase merely provide positive reinforcement to an industry that continues to capture/breed and imprison wild animals?
The logical endpoint of that line of thought would leave me a vegan, of course. And that ain’t gonna happen unless I can figure out how to fix a vegetarian meal that doesn’t bore the hell out of me and everyone else in this household.
D.
The dream is about lost and gone opportunities/stage of life. Or that’s what my Personal Dream Interpreter always tells me about my recurrent “oops, I forgot I own another house in another city” dreams. Same idea, something neglected and forgotten, only in my case it’s an inanimate object.
Lost and/or gone.
Come to think of it, that’s what she says about nearly every dream I have.
What about animal shelter pets? That way, someone else has already made the industry-reinforcing purchase, and failed to take care of the critter. That’s how we got our degus – the local SPCA had 10, with no idea how to take care of them. They might be happier in the wild, but at least I know how to feed them and nothing’s trying to eat them.
Hi Kate! I wonder . . . interesting problem, really. If we had no choices in life, our lives would be frightful (even if we were being channeled into some sort of awesome role). But with choices comes Things Not Chosen, which leads to these annoying dreams (sez you). Hmm.
Chris, good point. We got our cats from the shelter (after getting the third degree). Next time I have a yen for another reptile, I may hit them up and see what they have.
Here we are on vacation in Maine and we brought our 20 year old cat with us. He was the perfect traveler and is snuggled next to me as I write this. Last year we boarded him in a veterinary hospital when we went on vacation because he is frail and needs medication twice a day. He was so distraught to be left behind that he refused to eat and had to be given fluids sub cutaneously. So, this year we brought him with us and I am glad we did. He’s been a joy for 20 years and I could not bear to think of him dying of a broken heart.
But, I also have had strange dreams about neglecting pets that surely must stem from deep feelings of guilt that most people raised Catholic (in the 50’s, at least) share.
I’ve had similar dreams where I’ve had additional birds I didn’t realize I had and survived somehow without me knowing they were there.
Strange! Never suspected this one would be as common as the Student’s Dream.