Cat Telepathy: They don't have to

The examples of telepathic contact with cats, in my last posts, all show the richness that grows in one's life as one learns how to awaken the senses. I taught a brief class in how to do this once. When I saw one of my students a week later, he said he had tried it with his cat. I was intrigued.

What happened? I asked. He smiled a bit ruefully.

Well, I thought to her, “Why don’t we talk together like people do?”

And she answered – or at least I heard in my head – “Because I don’t have to!” And then she turned around and walked away waving her tail.

I will admit I cracked up. It was so feline.

Was it a woman’s voice? I asked him when I had stopped giggling.

Yes, he answered thoughtfully, it was.

So one of the first lessons we learn, in exercising our new-found powers of sensory awakening, is that other things are not only alive, aware and responsive, they also have their own opinions about us, which may or may not be complimentary.

This is why it is so important to approach all things with respect and kindness. Bring gifts. 

She will want to talk to you, I pointed out, if you have something interesting to talk about. Cats are very practical and self-centered creatures. I suggested that next time his cat is sitting quietly and dinner time is near, beam a big close-up image of her dinner, complete with fragrance. After a moment, ask her mentally,

"Do you want some food?"

If she bounces to her feet and starts meowing hungrily, ask her mentally which flavor of food she would like. See if you can get some input from her that is in her own interest.Then, of course, bring her the food she asked for.

He said he would try it, but I have not seen him since. So I do not know if he followed up, or he and his cat lapsed back into companionable silence.

Cat Telepath: Blackie

The last posts have told the stories of my telepathic moments with cats named Lilith, Twinkle and Tigger. After Twinkle and Tigger went their ways I got Bootsie and Blackie as tiny kittens, so small at first that I could hold one in the palm of each hand. Bootsie was Twinkle all over again, neutered male version – fluffy, white, affectionate, dumb as a post but you had to love him. Whatever came up he would charge into it and get mixed up in it somehow.

Blackie, on the other hand, from the very first developed the habit of waiting quietly underneath something while Bootsie got himself dirty or scolded or wet or whatever the outcome was of his latest rampage into the unknown. Bootsie was the kind of cat that curiosity kills, but Blackie was a Witness. The things Bootsie did that worked out well, Blackie would also begin to do. The things that got Bootsie into a mess, Blackie would not imitate. Why should he get his paws dirty? Like Tigger, he was the smart one.

And I communicated with him telepathically from the very first. Bootsie had the same opportunities, but like Twinkle he wasn’t that much of a talker – he was more a kinaesthetic learner. Bootsie didn’t need to talk about things to figure them out, he needed to fall over them and get them stuck in his fur. But Blackie took to telepathy like a natural. As a result I have had casual conversations with him all his life. He has heard me tell the Tigger story, and has his own inscrutable plans about how he will handle it when he finally leaves his own cat-body for the Next Step.

They were all my teachers – four wise souls in furry little bodies, that snuggled with me, and ate my food, and in exchange gave me the gift of sensory awakening as they understood it. Blackie sleeps on the front porch as I write these words.

Cat Telepathy: Tigger

The last post told about my cat Twinkle’s communications breakthrough, and the good use she made of it. Tigger, who as I have said was a lot more alert mentally than Twinkle, watched all this taking place. I saw him watching Twinkle ask me directly if she could go out, and watching me as I responded. Then one day, some weeks after Twinkle had established this as a family tradition, I heard,

Can I go out, please?

But it was a young man’s voice, quite different from Twinkle, who always sounded like a party girl. I went to the door and Tigger shot between my legs and outside. Not Twinkle.

I thought that was impressive, and went off to work without much more thought about it. But when I got home I lay on the sofa to rest. Tigger came up and sat on my stomach, his furry, orange-striped face looking right into my own. He was usually a bit more standoff-ish, so I thought that was friendly. I should have known he had an agenda. For as soon as he got himself settled, I heard,

Can we talk about other things? I stared into his golden eyes for a moment while I processed that my cat had just asked me a question. He looked away. It was so natural that I responded as I might to any attempt at conversation.

Do you mean besides going out? I wondered.

Yes, besides that.

You see that we can. Did you want to talk about something? He paused a moment, still looking down.

I heard you talking the other day, Matthew, about how people live a lot longer than cats. Is that true?

It occurred to me far too late that I should not have talked about that in front of Tigger. But – I didn’t think it mattered! Now I realized it did. He was upset. I had to help him to a better place with it.

Yes, I admitted reluctantly, cats live fifteen or twenty human years – people maybe four times as much.

Four times -- ?

We live as long as four cats.

Oh! Look, if we can talk – aren’t we – I mean – aren’t we the same?

Yes, we are both souls, but in different bodies.

Why are you in a human body and I am in a cat body?

Have you been wondering about that?

I have. I don’t understand it.

Well, I don’t know how these things are determined. But what I am sure about is that our bodies are temporary.

Temp –uh – what?

They don’t last forever. But we do. We go on. We get other bodies. Or we have no body at all. The body dies, the soul lives on.

And I have a – soul – even though I am in a cat body?

Surely if we can communicate like this, we both must have souls to communicate with.

Oh! Another long pause. What do souls do when they die?

I thought of Spiritualism, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and modern accounts of the Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) of people who have flat-lined or legally died on the operating table, but recovered. 

They leave their body. They can see it lying dead below them. They see darkness all around, but in one direction there is a light. The light is God. The souls go to that Light and by following it they find their way home.

Home?

Where God is.

Oh! Who is God?

The conversation went on for the better part of an hour. I don’t think we resolved the last question too clearly, but Tigger grasped the concept.

From then on he often came and sat on my stomach when I lay on the couch, and at his instigation we would pursue philosophical questions, which seemed to interest him greatly. He also had met My Lady and was deeply impressed by Her, so he was interested in what I was learning about Her.

The day came when he was an old cat, too sick to go on any more. We took him to the vet, who would give him the death shot to end his discomfort. First she gave him an intravenous to revive him so we could say goodbye. Even so, he was pretty logy. Then she connected the poison syringe to the intravenous.

Suddenly I heard Tigger’s voice, familiar to me by now. But it was circling in the air over our heads! My wife was completely dissolved in tears. The vet looked sick and unhappy. There was a dead cat on the table. And this same crazy cat was dancing round and round above our heads, crying out happily,

Matthew! I’m not a cat any more! I’m not in that body! I’m not a cat! What should I do?

He sounded so joyous to be freed of that heavy, hurting, dying cat-body! Gathering my scattered wits (I was pretty upset myself), I thought to him

Do you see a Light anywhere, Tigger? Look all around you.

A pause, then wonderingly, No, I see no light. It is all gray.

Look again! Look harder, Tigger! Look for the Light!

Oh! Yes, it is lighter over there.

God is in the light, Tigger. Go to the Light. Go to God!

And I heard his voice for the last time, saying

I’m going to the Light, Matthew! I’m going to God! Goodbye!

Then my wife and I were both crying, but my tears were tears of joy. I felt profoundly honored at having been allowed to show him the way to God in that enormously important moment. It was such a strong ending for a fine cat. It gave me great strength to help my wife deal with what she could only understand as a tragic loss.

Cat Telepathy: Twinkle Starr

In the last post, I told about a moment of contact with my cat Lilith. She didn’t have many other conversations with me – she was content with petting and food and a warm place to sleep. But her successors were a white, long-haired, feather-brained sweetie named Twinkle Starr, and a long-legged tiger tom (fixed) named Tigger, with a Siamese meow and a very quick understanding. 

Twinkle didn’t ask for much – being the family beauty and treated accordingly was enough for her. But she did have one problem. This was that I persisted in shutting the screen door, when she wanted it left open so she could go in and out as she pleased. It didn’t matter which side of the door she was on – when I shut it she began to wish she were on the other side.

This persistent failure to communicate led to her meowing forlornly before the screen door until I got up from my seat again, and let her pass through the same door she just went through in the other direction. Since what she really wanted was to have the door left open, she was never satisfied and there was a lot of forlorn meowing.

Then one day, as Twinkle was sitting with reluctant patience beside the closed screen door, I heard a girlish voice in my mind. It said,

Can I go out please?

I stared at her. She had told me what she wanted telepathically! I was so thrilled I stood up right away and let her out.

After that she knew she had me. I was so excited about hearing her wishes in that way, that she got what she wanted instantly. From Twinkle’s perspective, that was more like it! The next time Twinkle ambled over to the screen door and found it closed again, she looked over at me and again I heard

Can I go out please?

I complied promptly and she went out like a shot, obviously pleased. She had finally trained me!

Like Lilith, Twinkle saw no reason to expand her repertoire beyond that one practical application. But she used her one human trick for the rest of her life, and we all had to endure a lot less meowing. I found it much harder to blandly ignore her when she spoke to me in the voice of my own kind.

Cat Telepathy: Lilith

Aloha once more, gentle readers!

The next few posts will relate examples of the use of sensory awakening for animal contact.

It is natural that I should turn to cat stories for this, having been close to cats all my life. I don’t suppose cats are particularly telepathic – there are plenty of books in print and out of it about telepathy with horses, dogs, and other domesticated species, as well as moments of contact in the wild. But we did not have horses, or dogs or accessible wilderness when I was growing up, because we were in the city. So I got used to cats.

Still, it was only when I was an adult with a cat of my own that the first real event happened. I was home alone. Notice that this means there were no other people in the apartment.  But I did have a cat, named Lilith. I was not as alone as I thought.

It was the end of a hard day’s work, after dinner, and I had been resting in my favorite armchair for some time. I had placed a glass of water on the floor next to the armchair, where if I reached down gently my hand would come straight to the glass so I could lift it up and have a drink. Without realizing it, I was in the state of passive attention in which telepathic contact moments occur.

My tabby cat Lilith strolled around from behind me, gazing fixedly at my glass of water. When she came in front of me so we could see each other’s faces, I heard a woman’s voice in my mind, interrupting my thoughts like one radio transmission cutting across another. It said,

There’s a bug in your water dish.

She stared at me solemnly and walked on. I picked up my water glass carefully.

A Daddy Longlegs spider had fallen into the water. I took glass, water and spider to the door and set it free unharmed. I did not try to contact it, but the simple piece of advice from Lilith had given me the eerie feeling that if I addressed the spider mentally, I might get an answer.

What was apparently Lilith’s voice had referred to my water glass as a “water dish” – the word that I used for her drinking vessels, but not my own. And while Lilith had plainly seen the spider in the water as she walked past it before addressing me, there was no way for me to know there was a spider in my water glass until, at Lilith’s suggestion, I picked the glass up and looked.

It was a vivid piece of verifiable paranormal contact, happening in such an off-hand (or off-paw) way that it would have been easy to miss it completely.