What it usually means
Cats live with people on their own terms, and that is most of what they bring into dreams. Where a dream dog tends to speak about loyalty, a dream cat tends to speak about independence: closeness that cannot be demanded, attention that comes and goes, a creature that stays partly unknown however long you share a home.
As with any animal, start with your own history. If you live with a cat, a dream about it may simply be about your cat. Dreams of pets, especially pets that have died, are common and often comforting, and need no decoding beyond that. If you are afraid of cats or allergic to them, the dream starts from that discomfort, and the reading shifts toward something unwelcome that keeps coming close.
Beyond the literal, cat dreams often concern intuition and self-possession — knowing something without being able to explain how — and the parts of you that resist being trained, managed or explained away. Many cultures have also linked cats with the hidden and the uncanny, and dreams sometimes borrow that atmosphere.
What changes the meaning
A calm or affectionate cat. Ease with your own independence. Comfort that does not need constant reassurance.
A cat that scratches or attacks. Something you treated as harmless has turned sharp. Sometimes a boundary, yours or someone else's, being enforced.
A cat that ignores you. About attention that cannot be commanded. Often appears around people whose affection you cannot predict.
A kitten. Something new and vulnerable, usually a fresh piece of independence or creativity that needs protecting.
Many cats. Instinct in abundance, sometimes overwhelming. Can reflect too many small demands, each insisting on its own way.
A lost or missing cat. A part of your independence or intuition that has gone quiet, or a fear of losing someone who comes and goes.
A black cat. Carries strong cultural weight: good luck in some traditions, ill omen in others. What it meant to you on waking matters more than either.
A sick or injured cat. Neglected self-care, or an instinct you have been overriding.
Feeding or caring for a cat. Tending to your own needs, or to a relationship that thrives on respect for distance.
When it keeps coming back
A cat that returns night after night is often worth treating as a character rather than a symbol. Note how it behaves toward you over time. A cat that moves from wary to close tends to mirror growing trust in your own judgment; one that keeps leaving may point to a part of you that wants room you are not giving it.
If the recurring cat is a real one you have lost, the dream is most likely part of grieving, and repetition is normal.
It can also help to compare the cat with other animals in your dreams. If dogs turn up around obligations and cats around time alone, the pair may be marking two needs you are trying to balance: being relied on, and being left to yourself.
In Jungian terms
Jungians often read animals as instinct in visible form, and the cat as the instinct that refuses domestication. It lives in the house but does not belong to it. In that sense it can stand for a self-contained, intuitive side of the psyche that the conscious personality would rather not account for.
Some Jungian writers link the cat with the feminine, and with what Jung called the anima, the inner figure that carries feeling and intuition. You do not need that frame to use the image. What matters is whether the cat in your dream was welcome, feared or ignored, because that tends to mirror how you treat your own unexplained knowing.
The question the cat asks is about room. Where are you trying to manage something that would do better if you let it go its own way?