All Hallows Dream, in which a cat comes back

It's Halloween. I am going to some kind of party, wearing all black and a red hooded cloak (no, until now I didn't think of any connection to little red riding hood). I think I'm just trying to look different than usual, not dressed as something. I spend a fair amount of time sorting through very similar looking clothes in my closet, in a room much like the one I grew up in at my parents house (it might be that one). I do go to the get-together, and sort of hang around awkwardly not knowing what is going on, which is fairly accurate (except, in real life I don’t celebrate Halloween anymore). Darkness is falling.

Somehow I find out that my cat, which was apparently missing for some time, and has been found by somebody and taken to some kind of shelter. The cat in question is C-, who actually died several years ago, but in the dream he was still alive, just lost. I am absolutely overjoyed to get the call. I go with my husband to go find this place. We drive down drizzly logging roads at dusk. Near somewhere that looks like the road where I grew up, we see a young girl with a small pony, riding up the road. I mention to my husband that there used to be a pony at the end of the road that would escape and come down to our house. But then I realize that that pony has surely passed on by now, and this must be a different pony. It is also smaller and browner, almost the size of a Shetland pony.

We get to the place where the cat is being kept, which actually looks kind of like I imagine a preschool or kindergarten would look inside. There are a number of small children, and lots of children's drawings and brightly colored letters and such on the walls, but there are also dividers sort of like cubicles. A short round woman, probably about 40, with light abundant curly hair pulled back into something like a ponytail talks to us about the cat. She seems reluctant to turn him over, and somewhat disapproving of my having lost him. When I see him, he looks actually quite a bit different than C- looked in real life, but in the dream he looks like I expect. He is black like C-, but he also has a small white mark on his chest, and a smaller one next to his left ear, which C- didn't have, and he has some very small brown/torti marks on his face. In the dream, however, he looks "right" and I am very happy to have found him. I have not brought a cat carrier (typical), so I borrow my husband's jacket, which is a light tan one, pick up the cat and wrap him in it tightly with his head out (he is somewhat frightened and jumpy and all claws). I remember all of this part very clearly, and we go back to the car to take him home.