As with most dreams, the first thing you must consider is your own relationship with and feelings about cats. If you're a cat lover, seeing a cat in your dream is likely to mean something different than if you loathe or are afraid of cats. As Stephanie A. Sarkis, Ph.D., wrote in Psychology Today, "Your chipmunk is not someone else's chipmunk. The meaning you apply to a chipmunk is what your experience has been with chipmunks in day-to-day life." And so it is with cats.
Interestingly, unlike many symbols in dreams, your gender identity might also affect what a cat means to you (via Bustle). Cats are often associated with qualities considered to be generally feminine like intuition and grace. They have also been associated with feminine power in both positive and negative ways; the Egyptian goddess Bastet was often depicted as half cat, half woman, and she was revered as a powerful deity (via National Geographic). Bastet was the goddess of protection, pleasure, and good health (via The Egyptian Museum). Alternatively, as we discussed earlier, cats have also been associated with vilified female power, said to be familiars of witches and able to walk between worlds, assisting powerful (but evil) women in controlling other people, the weather, and virtually anything they wanted into succumbing to their will.
As such, if you identify as a woman, you may relate more closely with the cat in your dream than someone who identifies as a man, thanks to these long-held cultural influences.
