BACKSTORY
At first, it was just one cat’s dream. A cat: a queen, in every sense of the word, in charisma, beauty and love for her fellows; and also in tragedy. As were so many, at that time – if such a word can be used, for as we will see, time can be difficult to place – cats were beneath the paws of men, and this fair queen was little more than an agent, a thrall to a human family. Her well-being, her freedom and her capacity were not of her own volition, but she knew no different. This is how things always were then, just as this is how things always were now; it simply never happened that cats should be at once hale and unfettered. Like so many, she believed herself happy.
And perhaps she was happy, for a while. But as so many stories go, that happiness was shattered, hardly ironically any more, by love. This queen’s luxurious blue form, so prized by her human owners, was instead given freely and in gladness to a roving tom. In human society, everything is reckoned to be worth something, but the results of this young romance were deemed without value to the humans, and thus, as things were, without value at all. They were drowned, as was the custom, and the queen was left in despair by the fire indoors as her kittens’ distant cries for help died away.
It was through this irreproachable sorrow that the young queen snapped out of her broken view of the terrible world in which she lived: in which cats were at the beck and call of human masters, in which they starved or were killed by their noxious machines, and in which kittens were drowned for the colour of their coat. She sought out an answer, some hope of freedom that might allow her to carry on through life and not merely give herself in to the fire. She closed her eyes. She slept.
She dreamed.
In the world of Dream, a plain of bones that stretched on forever, she traveled. Grinning skulls of every beast barred her way, over which she leapt. Jagged ribs cut at her feet, which she kicked. Unyielding, she at last came to the home of Dream, a yawning crevice rimmed with fearsome guards. Steeling herself, she entered.
Dream was there: an immense, shadowy cat, with eyes like red moons. He invited her in, and questioned her purpose there. Of perfect breeding, she answered plainly: she sought revelation. He gave her the Truth.
The truth is that cats once dominated the world. That they, immense beasts themselves, lived in luxury in lush lands, kings and queens all. That freedom was given to each and every feline. And that mankind, so malevolent and destructive, was nothing more than a species of small creatures which existed to groom, amuse, and serve as amusing prey for the magnificent race of cat. They ran, we would give chase, and then we would eat. The sight of this sport brought a purr to the blue queen’s throat. But Dream’s vision continued.
Reality, he said, is transient. It is destroyed and created anew each night, which each sleeper as she dreamt. The humans know this, or once did, for in that time of cat lords and ladies, they gathered together, and they dreamed. A thousand of them dreamed, all at once, of the world that you, reader, know well: the world into which the queen’s children were brought, and the one from which they were taken away. Reality changed, and thus mankind became – or rather, had always been – giant creatures capable of intelligent thought and industry, and furthermore, capable of enslaving all other creatures brought before it. We became the prey.
With this, the vision closed. With her newfound understanding, and the blessing of Dream, the queen returned to the waking world. That night, she left her human masters to share what she had learned: the terror of the life she had known, and the hope of the life she knew was waiting for her, and all cats, just beyond a dream. The queen, known now as “mistress”, traveled the world, telling all she came across of her revelation and wishing for a brighter future. A brighter past. A thousand men, it had been; a mere thousand had slept and in doing so changed the universe to that terrible form.
A thousand cats…
*Story copyright Neil Gaiman (Sandman #18: Dream Country - A Dream of 1000 Cats)