My dad is Chinese and my cat jumps into the ocean. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm on a floating, man-made island. I'm on vacation. Suddenly, a ton of homeless people come and sit where me and my parents were at. We leave because we don't want to get accused of their crimes. 

My fluffy white cat leads me to the stairs we need to go up to get to the main island. Suddenly he jumps in the ocean instead of taking the path on land. The water is clear, turquoise, and there is no turbulance. 

At first, he seems to find some stairs and swims towards them, but then, he deviates. I jump into the water after him, fully clothed. I wonder if I'll drown, but I'm okay. I manage to catch him and pick him up and carry him to the stairs. 

I'm in an office with a black man and his golden retriever. He gives me some advice. 

Then I find myself going against traffic on some spiral stairs again with my parents. It's mostly Japanese businessmen coming down, but a fat, middle aged woman in a huge, flamboyant, puffy red-orange kimono comes down too. Her shoes are pointed, curl and the ends, and are covered in golden beige silk.

I say to my parents, "All kinds of Asians are here in the Philippines, right?" My Chinese dad says yes.

I get absorbed in an eReader with a built-in token. It generates a password for me. I'll have to save it later. Don't want anyone to look up Dr. Alok Kanojia, who put out this eReader. He has gooning videos! And this app is mainly about gooning!

I go up the stairs by myself and end up in the small, cramped apartment of my nemesis acting teacher. There are other people milling around for this class. The decor is slightly themed in black and white with splashes of red. The teacher comes and tells us to play games. 

I empty out a laundry basket of board games. I see something that looks like that caterpillar children's game, Cootie, but it's themed around Beatles trivia. I ask the person next to me who is looking at another caterpillar came if he would like to play this one. We agree to this game, but then the teacher stops everyone and tells everyone but two of us to leave. 

I'm very nervous about this. I believe I'm in mild danger.

I sit in a chair that takes my flying out of there to another place on this metal island. The trip is nice. It's like flying on a plane.

INTERPRETATION

Lately, I've been having dreams that encapsulate my relationships with a broad demographic in addition to revisiting specific relationships I've had with people in my distant past. For example, I dreamed about a nun who had kids to support, and she was having sex and depending on an old boyfriend of mine. I was observing her feelings about sex and romance and this specific boyfriend, and it totally reminded me of my overall, general feelings about how my sexual relationships with men have been over the course of my life.

I think this dream draws out some of my concerns about the responsibilities of pet ownership. I love cats and dogs and animals in general, but I'm not sure I want to be a pet owner again. It's a huge responsibility. You can't really go on vacation without risk. You have to either invite someone into your home or you have to take the animal with you. If your cat jumps in the ocean, you've got to risk your life to jump in there after it. And it's a living creature, so it has a mind of its own (it won't do what you want), and it's prone to getting sick and injured. You can't have just the fun parts of pet ownership, like chilling with your handsome kitty, who's sitting on the counter as you cook breakfast in the morning.

However, in the dream, the golden retriever was of great assistance to the man who was giving me advice. I wasn't exactly sure how the golden retriever was helping him, but I knew it was. So maybe pets give us benefits in subtle ways. 

Certainly, I love experiencing those feelings of love and affection for another being, and I love being reminded of what it was like to have a child's mind. (That's always what I think of when I'm around cats and dogs.)

And then the relationship with the acting teacher was pretty specific in this dream. He got away with bad stuff in one-on-one, private situations. Not stuff that would put you in fear for your life, but you were at risk of being harmed by this guy in lesser, but still impactful ways.