Did My Dream Predict My Cat's Death?

[nottheone]

I am going to relate a story that happened to me. You can say I am lying but that isn't debunking, it's disbelief that I am telling the truth. I give my word of honor that everything I am about to say is the absolute unembellished truth.

The problem with psychic phenomena is that for the most part unless it actually happens to you, you have to rely on second hand testimony and there will always be some disbelief because of that. In fact, even though this and several other things have happened to me, I still have some doubt. But the fact remains this can't be explained unless you invoke some heavily low odds or doubt what I say really happened.

I was staying at my parents about 15 years ago in between house moves. They had an outdoor cat for many years that had disappeared a couple weeks before this event. I had a vivid dream, like I often do. This was a small part of my usual nights dreaming. In it I dreamt that the cat was hit by a car at the end of the driveway in the road. The window in the room faces the road but the road is 100 feet from the house. I also dreamt that the cat wasn't killed but crawled up to the back of the house, which faces the road, before dying. This dream was so vivid and unusual for me that after I got dressed for work I went out back and looked to see if the cat was there. It was unusual because it isn't the type of dream I usually have. I looked for a couple minutes and then left thinking it was just a dream. 3 days later my cousin found the cat behind the house dead. He said it looked like it had been hit by a car. He couldn't say how long it had been there. It wasn't far from where I looked but I didn't make a very thorough search because I thought there was nothing to the dream.

Let me dismiss the obvious. I didn't and couldn't have heard the cat get hit by a car and even if I did how would I have known it crawled up to the house? That almost never happens, cats that are hit by cars almost always die on the spot or don't die. Also the road is too far away for me to have heard anything. My cousin said the cat had obvious severe injuries but a cat that is hit by a car doesn't look like a cat that was killed by a predator and back then there weren't any anyway. I just wish I had found it because I would have known whether or not it died before or after I had the dream.

To me the odds of having the one and only dream in my whole life out of thousands of a cat getting hit by a car and crawling away within a couple days of our cat being found like I dreamed it are slim to none. It seems much more likely to give it a psychic explanation, just as any of you would if this happened to you exactly as it happened to me. I don't blame you for not believing this, it's one of those things that has to happen to you to believe it.

 

[heldervelez]

uncounsciently we made a lot of thinking. and our inconscient is ruling in the shadows.
you are aware of the disappearing of the cat. almost surely you have previously seen dead cats hited by cars along roads. you are counscious of the nearby road. you are looking for an explanation, unconsciently. usually cats do not go away.
by nightime our inconscient get the freedom.
to me the strange part is the detail of 'see it returning home'. a dramatic end is better than a simple 'hit and die'. besides the cat disappeared several days before the dream and you have some sort of blame on you because you did not searched him sooner.

 

[nottheone]

Over the years we have had many cats and this wasn't the first time one would disappear for days or permanently. It wasn't my cat. I was only staying there for a couple of weeks. I didn't think about it or care about it. So I am sorry to say any explanation like that doesn't hold water.

 

[russ_watters]

Is is also common for people to misremember the order of events.

 

[nottheone]

That's true. But I didn't go out back looking for a missing dead cat just before work BEFORE I had the dream. Like I said, you can say I am lying but that isn't debunking the story. When I wrote the post I had in that line "... as I know someone with a lot of posts will." but I deleted it. Guess who I was thinking of? LOL

 

[Ivan Seeking]

No one said that you are lying but I understand how you feel. It is difficult to share a story that you know will be taken by some as a lie. I have told the story of the "haunting" that my wife and I experienced, and every time that I do I know it discredits me in the eyes of many who are reading the post, so I tend to feel a little defensive about the comments that follow. But the strange part is that when I hear someone else telling a similar story, my instinct is to think the story is bogus. I have to remind myself that it sounds like my story!

Russ was only pointing out that memories can be flawed. I think this applies particularly to long-term memory.

 

[turbo]

Another suggestion - 100 feet away is not too far away to hear screeching tires if some one slammed the brakes on to try to avoid hitting the cat, especially in the night when things are quiet. Your mind could easily have incorporated that into your dream since your cat had been missing for a while.

 

[nottheone]

Sure I could of heard that. Ignoring the fact that I am an extremely light sleeper and it would have awakened me, that happens all the time in the country, why and how would I have associated that with any particular thing being hit or anything being hit at all, let alone my mother's missing cat? And this assumes I had the dream the same night as the cat being hit which may or may not be the case.

And as far as not remembering goes I told my family the story when my cousin found the cat 3 days later, and many people since and the story hasn't changed, or the facts. I have an excellent memory anyway.

 

[z0rn dawg]

Could it be a sheer coincidence? Only two things had to be in order (cat hit by car and cat going to back door).

 

[turbo]

Sure I could of heard that. Ignoring the fact that I am an extremely light sleeper and it would have awakened me, that happens all the time in the country, why and how would I have associated that with any particular thing being hit or anything being hit at all, let alone my mother's missing cat? And this assumes I had the dream the same night as the cat being hit which may or may not be the case.

And as far as not remembering goes I told my family the story when my cousin found the cat 3 days later, and many people since and the story hasn't changed, or the facts. I have an excellent memory anyway.

I gave you a reasonable mechanism by which you might have dreamed this, as you asked. If you want to get negative, that's your look-out.

 

[Emanresu56]

Nothing can explain me guessing 7/7 questions correct on a Spanish assignment. Except sheer chance. Because I had no clue how to answer the questions.

 

[nottheone]

I gave you a reasonable mechanism by which you might have dreamed this, as you asked. If you want to get negative, that's your look-out.

I've seen pretty creative reading between the lines but your reading negativity in my response is some of the best. If you are going to read between the lines make believe there are a bunch of pleases, thank you's, by your leaves and with all due respects in there instead. This was meant as a positive not a negative. :) Sorry, I'm an engineer, so I am more of a content before form type of person.

 

[mplayer]

We are consciously aware of only a small fraction of the stimuli our nervous system receives at any given time. Our brain is a pattern-recognition machine. This coupled with an active imagination could have been constantly generating plausible scenarios for the disappearance of the cat, consciously or unconsciously. In a way it's prescient, but prescient like Nostradamus...make enough vague guesses and you're bound to be right about something!

Collectively, the world has tens of billions of dreams per night. Statistically, some of these dreams will inevitably correlate with real life experiences, potentially giving the impression of prescience. Invoking psychic phenomena is not the most reasonable explanation here, or for that matter, ever. I think many people experience this feeling from time to time, and even more lack the critical thinking skills necessary to put this emotion into its proper rational context. As a fellow engineer (ing student) it pains me to think that the best explanation a critically trained mind can come up with involves being psychic. Approach this like an engineering problem, look at it from many angles. There are many solutions, and many ways to arrive at the solutions, but very many of these are far from optimal. Hopefully this can help to shed some light on the situation. A good general rule of thumb in my opinion is that while there are many strange things in this world, supernatural explanations are not real solutions, and generally do not hold their weight.

 

[nottheone]

You are right. And as a critical, logical thinker I thought of all those things and dismissed them. There are only 2 possibilities I was left with. A billion (or much more) to 1 odds or a true psychic experience. Trust me, if you were as aware of ALL the facts as I am you would come to the same conclusion. I posted it here on the chance there is a possibility that I missed and so far that hasn't happened.

In case you are wondering how I came up with odds that are probably impossible to figure accurately I made some assumptions. I have never had a dream about a cat dying before or since let alone crawling away from the accident before dying. I think few people have, if any. The dream happened at the right time. I was not thinking of the missing cat at all, I didn't particularly like that cat and it wasn't mine. There was no way I could have been aware of the accident. I didn't know or care the cat was dead. (PS, I like cats, just not that one, it was a miserable cat)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think we've taken this as far as we can.