I am on a large sailboat full of thieves and one of the things we steal is a prize bottle of wine. Someone on the boat decides to steal the prize bottle of wine from the hold and secretly serve it to everyone else over dinner. Later the captain discovers the chewed-up cork in a bag and there is a terrible row.

There's a cat on board and late, late at night, after the row is all sorted out, the cat is purring. Gradually the purring sounds more & more like sentences and we all think this is the most adorable thing. I go to sleep on the couch and the cat sits near my head, saying some awfully coherent things and I am so siked. Soon the cat is saying disturbing things: forceful, controlling things, and the cat how one long claw (like a talon!) stuck in the back of my head. I try to shake it off and it raises its loong second talon like an index finger of warning. I shake and shake and shake my whole head all around and the force of shaking wakes me up.

I'm alone in a room in Edinburgh, Scotland.