Dreams about rats – what do they mean? (dream interpretation, rats, mice)
Dream interpretation of rats (mice)
Rats typically live underground in sewers and other places filled with garbage, feces etc.
In the world of dreams, when something is underground it’s often a symbol that it resides within the subconscious. It’s something you’re fundamentally unconscious about.
Garbage, feces etc. are often associated with negative phenomena in the psyche such as anxiety, envy, jealousy or fear (in addition, see Feces).
Rats are also carriers of disease and as such can be a symbol of something “ill” inside of you.
It could be that your thoughts, your actions or something else within your unconscious mind is destructive. Perhaps it’s a traumatic experience you have yet to process.
That’s why dreams about rats can mean that you’re presently being controlled, or at least influenced, by such negative phenomena.
This means that you may perform unfortunate and destructive actions – against yourself or others – in your daily life – without being aware that you’re doing it.
You may have a friend that you’re jealous of, which makes you speak ill of them behind their back.
It could also be that you’re keeping yourself from doing something that otherwise would be wholly right for you – but you aren’t consciously aware that your fear is holding you back.
Rats are as such symbols of typically destructive forces/thoughts within you that you’re unconscious about.
One association you could make is that the rats (the thing they represent) are gnawing at you. Maybe they’re even happily gnawing your life away?
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When trying to understand your dreams it is important to know that your dreams are… your dreams. As such, you are the best person to figure out the true meaning of your dreams.
However, it is important to learn how to generally approach your dreams. Dream dictionaries like this one are only a supplement, and if you want to fully utilize the potential of your dreams, you should start at a different place.
My online course “Unlock your DREAMlife” gives you a great foundation for understanding (and recalling) your dreams.
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The outer interpretation
In the outer interpretation dreams about rats can also symbolize that someone, or something, outside of yourself is harming you.
As always, you need to be honest to yourself when it comes to interpreting your dream. Are you the one with rats in your unconscious mind – or are they to be found outside of yourself?
If you’re caring for a rat (or a mouse) – as in having the rat as a pet – in your dream, it could be about the care you show for others in your life – or for what the rat represents.
You’re taking care of it (and to once again link it together with the slightly more negative, you’re keeping the rat alive.)
Dreams about mice often mean something else. Here, the mouse is seen as a timid animal. It also represents that humans can be gray (unimportant) mice.
Perhaps it’s something you feel about yourself at the present time, or maybe it’s the way others see you.
You either have to process your sense of inferiority or you have to work on standing out from the crowd.
In other words you have to be and remain yourself.
Dream dictionaries are a very helpful tool when interpreting dreams. However, generally learning how to approach your dreams, will give you a better foundation for understanding them. My online course “Unlock your DREAMlife” teaches you how to much better utilize – recall and understand – your dreams.
Also Read: Why I no longer interpret dreams for free
Return to the index of dream themes and symbols:
Dream interpretation A-Z ↵
NOTE: Dream interpretation is very individual. When you dream about rats its almost guaranteed to mean something different for you (in your situation of life) than it does to others also dreaming of rats.
Hi everyone. Wide variety of meanings I’ve found…. all I recall is the rat was from a abandoned home (my person, inside me, personality), I released him – bicolor, tame. He vanishes, then reappears, and finds me when I sleep and sleeps by me, casually walking away when I wake. Very tame, friendly. I had a few when I was young, also bicolor. Fully adult, great shape.
Taking extra care interpreting my dreams atm, getting diagnosed epileptic later in life does some strange things to your dreams and sleep, I try to remember, but this is all from last night that I recall.
I dreamt about a slue of mice and rats; they were together. There appeared to be more mice than rats, but one main big rat walking on his hind legs seemed to be the leader. They were accumulating in numbers. I believe they were supposedly in my grandparents’ old house, but it just looked different in the dream. I thought I was alone at first, but I recall other family members initially being there, too. I think we scared them away, as they seem to have scattered away. A cat was holding a rat or about to eat it on the staircase. That’s all I remember… very odd, because I don’t recall my dreams too much anymore.
I had dream of a wood rat. What does that mean ?
I was in the tub and I looked up to the ceiling and a small mice ran from one end of the ceiling to the other into the vent. That scared the crap out of me so I started to get out of the tub. For whatever reason there was a huge square hole in the wall in front of me. I looked toward the direction of the f the square opening and saw an oversized rat… like the size of a s mall baby monkey . It’s eyes were red and it like growled at me. I exited the room and ran to tell my boyfriend, he didn’t budge off the bed but my 3 children went to look, I told them to not enter the room but to stay back (they obeyed) my youngest was in front to see the huge rat cause he is shortest but the rat longed at him and landed on his back. Again my boyfriend didn’t budge, meanwhile I’m grabbing and beating the rat off him and slung it across the room then it runs off. Then I wake up.
I have had this dream several tomes now. “I’m my aunts house. We are talking and my cat is playing with her dog, my dog is under my feet asleep, but my nephew comes in holding my pet rat which is drenched and soapy. He tells me that he gave “mocha” a bath (my actual pet rats name is Snowball). I take the rat from him quickly and try to rinse off the soap by hand, the water he was using was scolding hot so I switch on the cold. The rat is trying really hard to breath but is making awful sounds. I rinse him off slowly then wrap him in a towel and start crying at his sounds. Within moments he’s limp in my arms not breathing.”
I wake up each time crying so hard i can’t breath. Please help me figure out what it means.
I am avoiding the rat in stairs but it follows me and I am disgusted with it the color of the rat is greyish after that I dreamed about white eyed brown horse I was avoiding it to but not disgusted i am scared with it then after that dream I dreamed i am adopted
Then my mom tell a story about me she see me I am riding a horse when I was baby I was kinda mighty warrior then someone texted my mom my current name is not my real name he says a name then he texted again but I forgot what then I went to kinda airport waiting for the man who texted my mom then I saw a chinese looking man I thought his the one then theres a two beds in the side I sit in the front of the bed and I see my friend sits on the other bed with a girls that I dont know they look like sassy rich girls then I feel my friend is fake. The end. Hope you can answer
My dream. I was walking inside a house floor wooden board floors. Through the wood, you can see trash and leaves. When I got in the center of the room in the center there was a grey rat mouth stuck on a nail. Trying to escape The nail. There no bleed. As I look up there was another one same as the center room but in a corner. After a while of watching. I was more focused on the one on the bottom. They both end up an escape with a little blood.
There was no one there. Never seen the house before. It was a one big room . What does it mean?
Last night i dreamed of me scaring rats out of the bed. Just to inform you, it was a multitude of rats., not just one but overflowing rats, that i was afraid at the end because i can’t drive them away, they are so many of them. I hope i can have your interpretation of this😧
First, I want to disclose that I have mice in my attic and I can hear them at night. But I had a weird dream last night that I figured out how the mice were getting in. It was a grate with large holes in it where mice (and rats) were easily getting through. My Mom (who died 2.5 years ago) was sitting in the other room and appeared to be lethargic and ill. I wanted to show her that I had found where they were getting in, and a lot of destruction the mice/rats caused. Per my usual dreams about her she is totally silent and only nods or acknowledges me, but never speaks.
Having recuring dreams about taking care of sick rats without anything in my past that might be rat related. I do take it seriously and want to know whats its about. Car accident .. 28 years.. very specific what research is that.
Hi Gaynor – and thank you for your comment and highly interesting dream! It is very hard for me to come up with (very) serious ideas as to what this dream might mean, as I don’t know anything about you, your life situation etc. A quick thought might be however, that the rats do not symbolize rats as such (you write that you haven’t experienced anything rat related), but rather something of an “ill nature” in yourself. The dream might symbolize how you spent a lot of time thinking about/worrying about something that needs to be taken care of. Maybe previous experiences, maybe simply just a worry that has “taken over” your whole system. The dream might say, you should stop taking care of those rats, and let them die. But these a just thoughts based on your dream. Best regards – Michael
Because I have had a lot of thérapy I no longer analyse dreams like you do; In my dreams I look for small gravels that move, little pieces that move, something that melt; it means that the neuroses are melting away, and it takes years. A car accident takes 28 years to come up in a dream; having escaped deportation at age 9,10 and 11 I still have nightmare that I am being marched to the gas chamber from times to times, seventy five years later.Dreams are invented by the subconscious to bring piece to the sleeper, and are not to be taken to seriously.