Nap Dreams Are Crazier Than Regular Dreams

There’s an empty Sugar Free Red Bull sitting on the table beside me, flanked by a tin of Apple Skoal Pouches, two remotes, my cell phone, and laptop. The Red Bull can is still cold; I just drank it. Still, though, as Game 3 of the Blazers-Nuggets series goes from regulation to overtime to double-OT and beyond, I fall asleep, the energy drink never taking hold.

I didn’t mean to fall asleep…it just happened. I had every intention of writing a glorious column about how cool it is to see two different one-team cities thriving in their respective postseasons, but too many late nights with little sleep sapped my plan.

Because I was on the couch, and because it lasted less than two hours, this was a nap. Those are some qualifiers; you don’t nap in bed — you sleep in bed. You nap on the couch or the chair or the loveseat or on long car rides. This was a nap, firmly.

And man, let me tell you, the dream I had during this nap was wacky as fuck and extremely vivid — a small consolation prize for missing an amazing game that ended after a fourth overtime period. The Blazers won, FYI, and now lead the series 2–1.

My cat was in it. My girlfriend was in it. And, of course, I was the star of the show.

For whatever reason — maybe because, in the dream, I had bet on the Blazers-Nuggets under — I owed my cat money.

And she was pisssssed.

We were all in someone’s backyard. There was a pool on the left of us, a shed on the right. I’m not sure but I think the backyard belonged to this chick I knew in White Plains, NY. I was only there one time, hammered.

Arrow, my cat, wouldn’t let the debt go. She kept attacking me, over and over. Rather than being a cute, cuddly thing, as she is in real life, she was a fuckin’ tiger in my dream. Claws to the face, biting, the whole bit. And I couldn’t get her to stop. She was like the squirrel in Christmas Vacation: absolutely relentless.

Don’t tell the ASPCA or whoever governs this kind of thing, but I had to fight back. It was me or her.

My girlfriend, obviously torn, wanted no part of it.

We struggled. Me, 200 pounds, and her, probably 20. I won, cause I’m a badass, eventually flinging her towards the pool. She smacked the side of the pool and fell quietly. The fight was over. My dream, finally calm.

After rising to my feet, we both walk over to Arrow-turned-Scar from Lion King.

The reveal was dramatic. Dark as we walked, dark as we neared, and then we got to her.

What the fuck?

Something was laying there, but it wasn’t a cat.

There was no head. There was no fur.

What was once Arrow was now an uncooked rotisserie chicken: pale and headless, just laying in the grass. Our cat, even though it was a monster in dreamland, was gone.

It’s funny to type now but it was scary at the time. So scary, in fact, that it woke me up, as all good nightmares do.

I rarely remember dreams, but this one was like a real head movie. And I rarely nap, so it got me thinking…are nap dreams crazier than regular dreams?

Since I didn’t have a firm answer, I turned to half-ass internet research, which revealed that I’m not the only one. I typed in “nap dreams” and it immediately added “are weird” to the end.

So I dug a little more and found that us weird-nap-dream havers are probably just sleep-deprived.

“A telltale sign of being very sleep-deprived,” sleep scientist David Dinges says, “is dreaming during a short nap.”

There’s also this headline from an article by Scientific American: Strange but True: Less Sleep Means More Dreams

Well, that sort of explains it, I just need to get more sleep. Of course, Dinges isn’t trying to get a brand to the next level, but that’s neither here nor there.

OK. So I know I need to sleep more. Got it. But I’m still temporarily obsessed with nap dreams. Either I deep-dive on Reddit or let it go. Odds are I’ll go from here to Reddit…then to play with my cat because I don’t want her to turn on me anytime soon.

Editor’s note: the cat in the picture above looks exactly like Arrow.