There's this animal. It looks mostly like a black cat, but has a very smooth coat, and a funny face; its face is flat, with eyes close together (as I often dream of cats that don't look right, and sometimes alerts me that I'm dreaming), sort of a cross between cat and human.

It's in a clinical setting, or a back room at the zoo. This animal sits on a stainless steel table, having been rescued from the wild or from a neighborhood, and it is very hostile. Go anywhere near it, and it just attacks with scratching and biting.

"The first thing we need to figure out," I say, "is whether these guys are always like this, or something happened to this one to make him so hostile."