A frightening dream.
I dreamt it was Christmas, though there were no decorations to indicate such and it wasn't particularly cold. I was out on the porch of a rickety old house with my white trash cousin and her fat lazy husband and her two fat lazy boys (IRL girls) and my great uncle. We were playing a "Survivor" style game which they played twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. Each person would write the given name of an animal on the farm. The animal with the most votes was essentially "voted off the farm"; it would be taken into the barn and killed, for no good purpose, simply for the pleasure of those humans playing the game.
As a joke, my cousin, her husband and at least one of the boys wrote the name of my beloved Mose cat on their metallic ticket ballots, each one thinking the others wouldn't write down such an unlikely candidate. As a result, my Mose, lovely sleek black cat, was marked for execution. I was shocked. My great uncle took her into the barn and killed her, out of sight.
The next day, back at my own house, I was livid with anger and shame at having participated in such a barbaric custom. I called my aunt, my cousin's mother, on the phone, but it turned out she was right in my house. I screamed at her for her family being such sick fucks. I went to my great uncle and asked him to describe how he killed my cat. He told me how he dug a hole and put her in it, using a piece of bacon to keep her down there. It was all I could hear before screaming at him, an otherwise gentle man, what a sick fuck he was. I shocked myself, using profanity with such an old man.
I screamed at my white trash cousin and her fat lazy husband for being sick fucks. I told my husband I was writing off her children for voting to kill my cat. He protested that children shouldn't be held accountable for the stupidity of their parents, but I refused to listen. This was too great a violation; as far as I was concerned, the entire family was culpable, contemptible and beyond redemption.
I scheduled two meetings that same morning. I took a shower. My younger brother came to tell me that I was 1-1/2 hours early for the first meeting and 1-1/2 hours late for the second. I didn't care. I was angry and I didn't care how many people were inconvenienced.
In the meantime, the stray orange tabby cat who hangs around our house moved in. I hoped I could just clean out Mose's litter box and she would use it, but I wasn't sure if my other cat, Ally, would accept that. I liked having the orange tabby there, but she couldn't take the place of my beloved Mose. I was angry with myself for participating in my cousin's semi-yearly farm animal "Survivor" ritual, because it lead to the death of my Mose cat.
What's odd about this dream is it's the first hostile dream I can remember about relatives other than my mother. I was relieved when I woke up to find my Mose there on the bed, very much alive.