I am kneeling in a rustic and dimly-lit room with a blanket wrapped around me and a turtle and a rat next to me on the floor. All I can see of the turtle is its rather flat unmarked dark gray shell but I can feel that it is lonely so I try to comfort it by cuddling up next to it in my blanket. The turtle is somewhat fearful of me so it sidles away and seeks company with a small gray rat instead. The rat is friendly and inquisitive but when I lean down with my face close to the two animals, it tries to climb up into the hood of my dark green raincoat. The little animal is soft and warm but I don't want it inside my coat so I remove it, explaining to Darchelle that it is, after all, a rat.

The rat has doubled in size and is so fat that I think it may be pregnant. I need to kill it so I grab it by the tail and behind the head so that it cannot bite me and take it through the kitchen and out the side door. I am not sure how to kill it. I consider asking Darchelle to help me drown it in our pond which is across the street but the rat might just swim away. As I am standing on the granite steps wondering what to do the rat begins to urinate so I hold it off to the side so that the urine does not splash onto me. The rat pees for a long time and when it is done it has deflated back to its original size. I peer in through its anus and see that it is empty inside.

Since the rat is small again I consider taking it back into the house but it would still urinate and make a mess so I still need to kill it. Taking it by the tail I slam its head three times against the edge of one of the granite steps. It is dead.

As is often the case, no explanation immediately comes to mind when I consider this dream.
One theory of dream interpretation holds that characters who are not otherwise identified may represent parts of oneself. If that is the case here then the rat could represent that part of me which for years criticized and condemned myself, making me so miserable that I wanted to die. I had perceived my father as critical of me, demanding of me more than I could deliver, but after he left I adopted his attitude towards me as my own. I apparently felt that by keeping him with me in that way, I could cope with the grief and anger I felt over losing him.
The theme of killing a rat is familiar from two previous dreams in which it represents letting go of, and moving on from, that attitude towards myself. In those dreams I kill the rat by crushing its head with my foot and the dead rat exudes a liquid as clear as spring water which I have associated with emotional healing. In this dream that healing process is represented by the rat urinating, a process of recognizing, acknowledging and expressing the sadness, anger and self-hatred within me. As I did so, over a period of several years and in part through therapy, those feelings lost their power, symbolized in the dream by the rat shrinking back to its original size.
In the dream I still must kill the now (almost) harmless rat, and to do that I seek Darchelle's assistance but in the end I do it myself, decisively. It was not enough to relinquish the self-hatred; I needed to replace it with forgiveness, acceptance and love for myself. Darchelle's love enabled me to finally do that.