In Dreams, I Need to Clean

I've been having a reoccuring dream that I have forgotten an apartment I used to live in. Something reminds me and I go back to it and it's always a really nice place except it's full of my stuff. I have to move out because I haven't paid rent in months and so I'm all flustered and trying to get everything in order and there is always a pet there that I've also neglected.

The most recent one was a bird. A chipper little black and white bird in a cage that hadn't been fed in who knows how long, still hopping and whistling on his perch. And the dream-guilt is horrible. How could I have forgotten my pet? It's a miracle he's even still alive! So I'll be scrambling to find him food and get him out of there because stuff is stuff, my poor little baby and how could I do this, how how how??

Then it will hit me that I have never owned a bird and there's no way I could afford a place this nice, especially to just leave it. If it ever had been mine, what made me forget about it, and if it hadn't ever been mine, what was making me think it was my mess to clean up? And then I wake up more disturbed than a messy apartment and an animal to save should make me.

( Luckily for me, I have a dream dictionary. )