You can never know what the things you say in your waking world may end up inhabiting your dreams.

My cat’s official whole name is “Henry the Love Sponge.” See, this cat came into my Dad’s wife’s place of work, which is kind of a warehouse. This happened the day after one of the greatest cats of all time, Anna Banana, had been struck to her death by a car.

So Ellen, my Dad’s wife, took on this boy because she was the only one in the place who could wrangle him. But she and my Dad were trying to retire from the cat business, and after Anna, they had one cat standing, a beautiful black girl cat who has to eat every five minutes because of a thyroid condition, which is not unusual for a 20-year-old cat.

So anyway, I have a cat now. This guy. Henry the Love Sponge.

Now when they were taking care of him, Henry didn’t play much; he mainly just hung out on their porch waiting for a human to sit next to him. But I knew that for this one-bedroom apartment fellow, play would be vital. Luckily, we unlocked that box pretty quickly.

Among the narratives I started using for this boy was that he secretly believes himself to be a ferocious tiger. Specifically, I say to him something along the lines of

ROAR! I’M A TIGER!

Which may explain why, in my dreams in my last sleep session, I dreamt I was literally under attack by a large, tenacious tiger. My boy isn’t quite as menacing as the one that was in my dream, but man, does he have some big tiger energy.