It occurred to me that dreams are the bulwark of a happy life. If you are having bad dreams, you are probably having a rotten time. Of course, you can't do much about your life. That's axiomatic. However, you could probably improve your dreams without too much work, and this in turn would make your life more pleasant.

Here are a few dreams I have been working on:

I dreamt my cat caught a mouse in the kitchen. "Get 'im, puss!" I said. She seized the mouse in her jaws, but didn't seem to know what to do next. I withdrew tactfully. A minute later I heard some awful screams: the mouse burst into the room where I was and rushed past me. "Gotta get the hell out of here," he said to me.

A few weeks later my cat actually did catch a mouse in real life. I heard a loud "clunk" in the hall, and she emerged from behind a bookcase with a fat mouse. She stood uncertain for a moment and then trotted off somewhere.

Now I dream that she catches mice all the time, every minute, and just eats them like gummi bears.