As I was browsing through my email, I came across a petition to stop the abuse of a beige and white tabby cat named Double Trouble, who was being experimented on at the University of Wisconsin. Not only did I sign the petition, I meditated on it. I found a researcher who worked on Double Trouble. Her name was Amy Hoff and she’s about to have a nightmare.

Amy’s dream started in the Sound Localization Laboratory at the university. I let Amy go about her normal duty, taking a cat from her cage, giving her anesthesia then subject her to invasive surgeries on her ears, skull, and brain. Once Amy was comfortable with the dream, I switched her with the cat. Amy was now Double Trouble and she was the one being experimented on.

Amy, the cat, woke up because the anesthesia wore off and she heard a very loud drill cutting into her skull. She screamed for them to stop but they didn’t. She was getting a very big headache and thought her head would explode. They couldn’t hear her scream through all the sound the drill was making. The experimenters then bolted screws and a square-ish electrical device into her head and skull. This made her lose the ability to move her head. She felt a burning sensation go down her ear canals as they applied some liquid to her inner ears which ended up in her throat. Then they implanted more electrical devices deep inside both of her ears during this surgery. Now she thought her ears would explode. But something about the liquid made her feel funny. She was starting to lose her ability to hear anything, which made her whole head feel like she was in a very tight tunnel with the bolted screws scraping the top of the tunnel. Her headache was getting worse as the screws and the electrical contraption were getting very heavy. Her whole head sagged from its weight. Her ears were scalding and now her mouth was getting very dry like she was swallowing sand and suffocating from it. She has never felt this much torture in her young life.

An hour later, the drilling finally stopped after what seemed likes days. She desperately wanted water as her thirst became urgent. She couldn’t move from being so weak from that torturous surgery. They left her on the operating table and went to work on another cat. She felt blood trickle from her head where she now had screws coming out of them. She hoped death would come soon. Someone picked her up from the skin behind her neck not knowing how much more pain that caused. No one gave her a drink or food. They just put her back in her cage. She curled herself up, hoping the pain would go away but it didn’t.

Amy’s dream continued and she knew it was a different day. Her head was matted as her blood dried up. Her mouth was dry as a desert and she couldn’t hear a thing. She tried to meow but it felt like her mouth was shut tight, although it wasn’t. Someone came and held her by the skin on her neck again. Normally she would’ve enjoyed being held like this but with the contraption on her head and injuries she’s sustained from the surgeries, this rough-handling really burned and made her headache a thousand times worse. The experimenter put her on a table and hooked up some electrodes on the contraption on her head. This emitted such a piercing sound that she wanted to jump out of her own skin. It felt like needles were being inserted into her ears but they were only sounds. The pain these sounds emitted was nothing like she has ever known. The experimenter kept turning it on and off, on and off, over and over again. She wanted Amy to turn her head this way and that but with the pain not subsiding, Amy was getting very dizzy. She vomited but since she has not had anything to eat in 2 days, there was hardly anything to vomit except her own stomach bile. After what seemed like hours of torture, she was once again put back in her cage.

After a few hours, another experimenter came to get her from her cage. Just as the pain from the first experiment was beginning to subside, there was the piercing sound again. The experiments started all over again. This went on for another hour. Then back to her cage, only to be taken out again after another hour. This went on all day until all the experimenters’ day was done. She was put back in her cage for the night.

She sat in her cage waiting for the pain to subside, which either she was getting used to it or it was actually going away. No one came to pet her like the old lady used to do. Amy remembers purring while her old owner would sit her on her lap as the TV softly played in the background. What happened to her old owner? Oh, yeah! She died. Amy was put in the shelter and was sold to this laboratory of horror. She wanted her old human back. Why did the lady who caressed her so gently have to die? What has Amy done so wrong that she was being brutally abused like this? If only cats could shed tears, Amy would’ve done so. She has never felt so much despair and alone. Now she understands how Prometheus feels having his liver pecked by an eagle for eternity in Hades.

Prometheus? Hades? How does Amy know such things? Amy realized this was only a dream and she woke up. She woke to a very moist bed. Sweat poured from the sides of her head and body. In her sleep, she had taken her pillow and wrapped it tightly around her head, which is the source of her incessant headache and near suffocation so she threw the pillow off. She sat up and started to cry. First tears fell slowly, then the sobs came and became uncontrollable which turned to fits of hysteria.

Like watching a movie but I knew I was still dreaming, I smiled. Amy will now stand up and be the voice for the voiceless. She has learned compassion and empathy. My job here is done. Next her coworkers.

(Author’s Note: Although the persons in this story are fictional, Double Trouble is not. She was one of many victims of the University of Wisconsin Laboratory testing cats for sound localization. Once they were done performing surgeries on Double Trouble, she became depressed and anxious. They deemed the experiment a failure and killed her only to decapitate her body and study effects of the torture they have done to her. Source: http://www.peta.org/features/uw-madison-cruelty)