OVER THE YEARS I HAVE COMMUNICATED WITH COUNTLESS ANIMALS and coached others to do the same. If I had a pound for every time I had told someone ‘just trust what you get, never mind about trying to interpret or make sense of it’ then I wouldn’t exactly be rich, but I would probably be well on my way to a lavish night out on the proceeds. Well, they do say that we teach best what we most need to learn, and it would seem that I still have to take my own advice from time to time and just trust whatever comes.

Just this week I had a classic example. Communicating with a puss cat that has been ill for some time and also suffering from stress, I was told ‘I need some more white powder’. Now, that simple sentence came to me at such speed while I was busy writing down what had been communicated to me just prior, that for some daft reason I dismissed it. When my mind re-visited it later it just didn’t seem to make sense or to fit with all the rest I had received and I missed it out. What on earth would a cat be doing with white powder? And yet it niggled at me… and I do know what that niggling feeling means. It means I should pay attention; I have missed something.

I ‘knew’ deep inside that the white powder meant antibiotics and that I had to trust that knowing, so decided I had better contact the puss cat’s person and tell her. Too late; less than twelve hours later she got to me first. Puss had had a bad day and after another trip to the vet’s, he had been prescribed more antibiotics. And to top it all, the vet had been told all about my communication and was prompted to investigate further, to discover that puss had been right; his throat was giving him trouble. Well of course he had been right!

Dare I say it? Please, when you communicate with your animal friends, TRUST whatever you get, never mind if it seems daft, doesn’t fit with everything else, feels like your imagination, might seem strange to someone else…or whatever. It was communicated to you and even if it doesn’t even make sense immediately to you or anyone else, it will all come clear in the end. As it happened, my neglecting to pass on that piece of information didn’t affect his health, but if I had taken the bother to tell someone something and they ignored me I could wind up a little miffed.

Now the above example was really just one of me having a moment of doubt, but sometimes things are simply not what they first seem. Some years ago I was called to visit a cat that was very depressed and fed up. She was clawing at doors, digging up carpet corners, peeing on clothes and generally making sure all around her knew something was up. Her people were perplexed; they loved her dearly and as far as they were aware nothing had happened that could possibly have caused such distressing behaviour.

Grateful to have someone to explain to she proceeded to tell me all about a tussle she had had with a new cat in the neighbourhood and how threatened she felt. This cat had even dared to come through her cat flap and into her house and the chase that followed saw a pot plant upended all over the carpet in the lounge. She had got the blame for that and since then had missed her rainbows. Now, up till this point, all was making sense. I was relaying to her people what had happened to unsettle her so and they were extremely grateful to know and not at all mad about the pot plant – though they confessed that, of course, they had presumed it had been she that had done it, as they had no other animals in the house.
But missing her rainbows? Surely I must have misheard.

I asked puss again about them and she told me how she loved to lay among them. Oh dear, this was just getting more bizarre. I explained to her people that she was telling me something about missing her rainbows and that I was really not sure what she meant. Time passed by and, after talking with Puss a little longer and feeling certain that all would now be well, I left her in the arms of her very understanding and caring people who were eager to reassure her and keep her safe from intruders. They politely shrugged their shoulders at the rainbow bit, but it bugged me; she had been so adamant.

A week later I received a call from this lovely family, with the fantastic news that their beloved feline’s behaviour was now back to normal and, with a laugh, that they had managed to find her rainbows for her! Let me explain.

The room where the pot plant had been knocked down had been kept out of bounds during the daytime prior to my visit. Having realised it wasn’t their puss developing a habit for digging at the soil and knocking plants over they reopened the room the following day. After a couple of days of things returning to normal, one of them had had cause to pop home from work mid-morning to fetch something they’d forgotten. Popping their head around the lounge door they saw puss stretched out luxuriantly soaking up the sun atop a table, surrounded by the brightest rainbows! Hanging top right in the window was a small wind chime with a crystal on it and with the sun out at that time of the day the room was filled with dancing rainbows.

They said they felt sure she was smiling at them with an ‘I told you so’ expression on her face.

Remember (yes, I am listening to me, too!), animals have a different view of the world than we do and that can sometimes lead to confusing communications. Mind you, even we humans can have trouble getting a point across at times because we are all different. In a workshop, I once asked a group of people to all look at a picture of a person unknown to them and to write a description of that person, with no consulting among the group. We then shared our descriptions and everyone was amazed to hear how very different they all were. We could have been talking about a number of people! Based on individual perceptions and experiences we can all describe the very same thing, even the same experience in quite different ways. And so can animals.