I am in the master bedroom in the house in Auburn, and a black cat with white feet is sitting outside the screen door to the back deck, trying to get inside. I try to shoo the cat away but it comes back and when I accidentally open the door, it races into the bedroom. I am not quick enough to trap it in the bedroom so it runs down the hall into the living room. I grab a blue broom with a red handle and go after the cat.
I find it on top of a big pile of furniture covered with old blankets and try to hit it on the head with the handle of the broom. I miss once or twice but even when I succeed in hitting it, I do not feel that I have hit it hard enough to kill it. It dies anyway.

I hold up a basket of brown rubber gloves to a tall woman, suggesting that she put on one of the gloves in order to get the dead cat down off the pile of furniture. She seems reluctant to use a glove but the cat ends up in a Ziploc bag on the floor.

I need to get the cat into a paper grocery bag in order to take it outside and dispose of it, but whoever is helping me can't seem to get it done. When I try to put the cat in the bag they cannot hold it open for me. When I try to hold the bag open, it rips down the side. No one is willing to pick up the cat and without arms, I cannot do it myself. In frustration I conclude that I will have to pick up the cat with my teeth. As I kneel down to do that, someone exclaims in alarm "Oh God, he's actually going to do it!"
The dead cat is lying on its side in the Ziploc bag, wet with body fluids. Somehow I grab its tail in my teeth, which sink into it as if it contained no bone. I pick up the cat and drop it into an open grocery bag then cover it with a piece of skin and fur which was lying nearby.
Wanting to rinse out my mouth, I go into the kitchen and turn on the faucet but no water comes out. That doesn't really matter since I don't seem to have any hair in my mouth anyhow.

Back in the mostly-empty living room Susan starts ripping strings of lights and ornaments off the Christmas tree which, though large, looks gray and threadbare with most of its needles and twigs missing. I want Darchelle to see the tree with its decorations so I shout at Susan to stop and she does.

I awoke from the dream horrified by my violence against the cat and not really wanting to understand what the dream meant. Nonetheless, I am pretty clear that the cat represents my marriage to Susan. Killing it probably symbolizes my decision to leave her and putting the cat in the bag probably represents my efforts to get over the pain I felt after doing that. The bedroom was the heart of our marriage and the living room, our life together. The pile of furniture represents moving out.

Although I consulted with friends and family before deciding to leave Susan, the decision had to be mine alone. Using my teeth to pick up the cat suggests my desperation to leave. The comment I hear as I do so expresses my own shock that I actually followed through with it. The absence of water suggests that there is no absolution for my guilt at leaving, but the lack of hair in my mouth suggests that no absolution is necessary.

I am not clear on the meaning of the Christmas tree scene. Susan is acting with anger, but the significance of removing the ornaments is not clear. Maybe I am projecting onto her my own efforts to deny the bonds I formed with her in our marriage, and am at the same time acknowledging the importance of those bonds to me.