dream journaling
(with bonus kitten!)
one of the times i got up in the wee hours of the night, i checked my phone and was served an ad on instagram for the los altos apartment building. if you watched angel back in the day, it's the building that played the hyperion. after i fell asleep again, i had a vibrant dream.
i was in the eastland, a real building in los angeles (not a real building, but it was one in the dream) that a building in a detective series i love (also not real) was based on. (think only murders in the building with the arconia based on—and i believe played by—the apthorp). the dream consisted of three scenes.
scene one: i was chatting with a neighbor, a young man, when another man appeared and berated him, being careful about what he said because i was there. it was, in this dream, very obvious that the man was some sort of mafia. “who is that?” i asked, and the young man lied that the other man was his professor at columbia. then the young man left and i ran into the older guy again and proceeded to pepper him with questions about his classes, which he did his best to answer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
scene two: i was in my eastland apartment, except i didn’t have an eastland apartment, so i was in a kitchen with channing tatum (?) and joey king (??). for some very important reason, i had to be utterly selfless and make out with him. dreams! (you heard it here first, dream channing tatum is a great kisser, very tongue-forward. also please note that irl i’m not at all attracted to him.) it was like a macro of fake dating, kissing him so she’d leave him alone. (they weren’t dating, i think she was his sister or something??? note to hollywood, that’s a great casting idea.) while still in the dream, i thought to myself: book premise??? (no. it’s awful.)
scene three: i was waiting for the elevator and jane curtin stepped off, dressed to the nines. she was talking on the phone, but as she stepped past me i said good morning. it was, if i'm honest, the best part of the entire dream.
so why was i up multiple times in the night? to check on her (and also pee):
this is theo, aka tater tot, aka lil tater. the reason she’s here is honestly incredibly sad. if you hate reading about animal abuse and related topics, this newsletter ends here.
one week ago, my husband called me from his commute home. i had just made a dumb joke via text and for a second i thought i had hurt his feelings, but when i answered i heard his softest, soothingest voice saying “it’s okay, you’re okay” and then i heard a tiny squeak. he explained that he had driven past a woman with her car stopped in the middle of the road, holding a kitten she seemed to have found there. then a block later he passed another stopped car. one more block and he shouted for his commute buddy, who was driving, to stop the car, jumped out, stopped traffic, and scooped up tater.
someone was, we think, driving down olympic boulevard and dropping a kitten out of their car at every intersection. what kind of monster.
“how late is the vet open?” he asked me, and i asked what he needed the vet to do. was she injured? no, so no need to go to the emergency vet. was she big enough to be chipped? no, so there’s nothing our vet can do without an appointment (they scanned sweet baby ray the day we found him). he was shocked to learn that there is basically nowhere in los angeles taking in stray kittens, because everywhere is full. i told him, you rescue it, you bought it—e.g. he saved her, he’s fostering her.
so he brought her home, wrapped in his overshirt and covered in her own poop, and we bathed her and fed her and put her in ray’s kennel overnight. the boys declared their intention to absolutely, positively not keep her. i said we’ll see. (i am keeping her.)
we estimate that she is about six weeks old. our apartment is extremely not kitten safe, so we got her a pop-up nylon pet tent, aka kitten jail. she is actually letting us sleep again after a very rough few nights of crying for her mama and litter mates, but sweet baby ray wakes us up when she’s hungry. (he doesn’t seem happy that she's here, but he is clearly a soft touch.) she’s got a vet appointment next week to get checked out, find out how old she actually is, and see if i’ve correctly guessed her sex or if i’m once again the only girl in the family.