Last night, dreaming in animation

I was in a yoga class, there was a movie playing in the corner. A stop motion animated picture of some kind. I was just thinking that this guy was way to close to me, uncomfortably close, when all of a sudden the dream because the film that's playing in the corner.

This old woman was sending a cat to this other magical world that she had visited. She was sending this cat ( who she raised from the dead, pulling it out of it's little grave behind a rose bush in the backyard ) like a letter, in order to tell this man she loved that she needed rescuing from an uncomfortably engagement with a man named George.

So the cat is transported to this world of busy crooked roads, dark street lamps and misty rain. There is a girl who is desperately looking for her mother. The cat joins the little girl in her pursuit. She only has a picture of her mother in her head, who looks remarkably like the old woman. The girl goes to places her mother once visited, she doesn't even know her name. She enters a candy/pastry shop where all the decorations on the goodies change from flowers to images of her mother. The shopkeepers know this little girl is magical, but they cannot help her.

The girl and the cat, now accompanied by a stray dog named Jasper, go from place to place, trying to track down this nameless mother. The little girl constantly is yelling "CAT!" and "DOG!" to keep them in line, for the streets are crowed and the noise of the city rumbles like a storm. They enter one building after another. A video clerk lost his records, a taxi driver can't remember an address, everywhere they go, people remember the mother's face but only her face.

The only clue the little girl has is a strange drawing. Someone mentions that it reminds them of the harbor and the wandering gang, which now includes a little orphan boy as well, race off to the harbor.

The woman at the harbor dropped her records in the ocean and all the names and addresses and telephones number bleed into each other. The boy becomes incredibly angry, frustrated by all their failures. But then the wind starts to howl and the shadows that were cast by the city lamps start to move and bend and pull at the corners of the room. They become shadow demons and they terrify the boy. He knows them, they represent his cruel childhood, his cruel older brother and cruel games he made them play. They try to fight the shadows and the wind, but both are too strong and everyone is pulled out of the harbor office and away, away to a new land.

The shadow demons want them to play this game. I am there, and so are my brothers. I think this is a test, that if we refuse we will finally find this missing mother. But then we start to play, and my entire family is there, this game were we can manipulate this material with our minds and try to hit our opponent and knock them in the water. But then the game turns into a board game. A board game that my mom is cleaning up. We had just had a family party, the guests have left. The stop motion animation film is now playing on my TV, and I want to rewind, because I don't remember watching it to this point. The little girl is in the country. Where I left off she was still in the city.