Dream: Shape-Shifting Sensei

I'm at a martial arts demonstration in a gymnasium.  I'm in one of the many seats arranged in a large circle on the floor.  I facing the bleachers.

The Grand Master Sensei is introduced.  He's the one everyone came to see.  I look at him.  He's wearing a red gi and black pants.  He appears to be Italian.  He seems uncomfortable and uneasy as he looks at me.  We know each other, so I smile and nod encouragingly and even give him a quick thumbs up.

He gets up and carefully makes his way to the floor.  Then he goes around to the seated people, one-by-one.

When he gets to me, I see that now he's an older Asian man.  I greet him reverently, with my palms pressed together.  I nod my head in a bow.  He speaks to me.  He tells me that I must get something.  It sounds like it might be an herb.  Goji, perhaps, or maybe Ginko.  I agree, and he moves on to the next person.

He comes back.  Now he's a young boy.  I do not have the herb (or whatever) that he told me to seek.  No matter, we go together to look for it.  I follow his gaze to a dark grey cat lying along a hedge.  It's stretched out, sleeping on its side.  I infer that the cat is the key to our getting the herb.  We approach it slowly.  He's approaching the head end, while I approach its tail end, expecting it to see Sensei and turn and run.  But instead, the cat turns into a small, furry worm or caterpillar, also dark grey.  So I pick it up and hold it in the cupped palm of my right hand, and I present it to Sensei.  Meanwhile, Sensei has also turned into a caterpillar, perhaps twice as large as the cat-caterpillar, and he has dozens of skinny wriggling legs that are about ½ inch long and orange-brown in color.  He begins eating the cat-caterpillar, which is now on the ground.