The inspiration for When Cats Dream came from a wonderful cat named “Tomato” who belonged to my girlfriend, Cyndi. Tomato was a very good boy, even though he peed on my bed a couple of times.
Back in 1989, I was renting the attic of Cyndi’s house, and Tomato used to come upstairs and lie on my table while I drew and painted. Often he would go to sleep while I was working, and when he slept, he dreamed. His little feet would jerk back and forth, and the muscles in his face and shoulders would twitch. I don’t know what he was dreaming about, but it must have been something FUN!
Unfortunately, in the fall of 1990, Tomato died after a long struggle with Feline Leukemia. As anyone who has ever lost a beloved pet will tell you, it is a very hard and heartbreaking thing to experience. Cyndi and I were devastated, of course, but after a few days something cool started to happen:
Tomato began to visit us in our dreams.
The dreams that Cyndi and I had were always quiet, comforting dreams. Tomato would come to us and crawl into our laps as if he was trying to say goodbye. He seemed to be telling us, “Don’t worry about me... I’m in a wonderful place now. Please stop being so sad.”
I remember one day sitting at the breakfast table with Cyndi, and she was telling me about one of her “Tomato dreams”. In her dream, Tomato had come to her... but he didn’t quite look like Tomato. He was very small, and could fit in the palm of her hand.
That small detail intrigued me, because in my dreams, Tomato always looked strange, too. Once he was very long and flat, like a fuzzy bath towel. Another time he was two cats (I can’t explain this one... he was just two cats). Still, in another dream, Tomato was the wrong color.
After talking about it for a while, we both realized that Tomato ALWAYS looked odd in our dreams. He always took on a weird shape or size or color.
It seemed strange that we would both be dreaming about the same cat on the same nights, but it seemed even STRANGER that Tomato always took on an unusual shape whenever he came to us. What did it mean? Who knows... it was probably just a coincidence. But it got me thinking about cats and dreams, and I knew there was a story to be told.
So a few months later, I sat down and wrote When Cats Dream.
