It happened once long ago that in a particular royal palace on a certain sunny morning everyone woke up with their head full of strange and unexplainable dreams – dreams of a kind they had never seen before. The king remarked on it to the queen, the queen replied that her dreams were also odd. The ministers, the priests, the soldiers and the servants – all said the same, that they had seen puzzling and confusing images during the night, and no one could say why.

When the chief cook heard that everyone’s sleep was disturbed, she thought that since all the people in the palace ate her food, it must have been something she had served them that caused the dreams, and she began to fret about the quality of the ingredients she had used. She studied her shelves and her pantry with deep concern, wondering if someone could have invaded her domain and put something improper there.

The chief priest of the palace knew that dreams belong to the spiritual realm, and therefore these must be connected in some way with the rituals he had performed the day before. Profoundly troubled, he searched his memory to see if there was some portion of the rite he had omitted, or if he had recited the prayers in the wrong order or with an inadequate attitude, or perhaps, a terrible thought, mistakenly blessed the palace with the wrong hand.

But when the royal cat heard what all the people were saying about strange dreams, she thought, “Yes, I know. It was I and my lover on the roof last night…”