A MyStory Life Theme: Pet Tales

Preface: In my previous post I introduced the topic of a new book I am working on, called MyStory (or, YourStory/ Mystory or simply Your MyStory, TBD). Each chapter explores Life Theme events that have punctuated a person’s life. I am trying on several of those themes from my own MyStory here in the blog while developing the manuscript. Hope you enjoy! – LKW

If you value in a relationship unconditional love, loyalty, mutual commitment, trust, loving companionship and lifelong cohabitation, live with a pet soul companion, or two or more.  This I have learned from a lifetime of living with my pet Friends.  Human relationships may come and go—such is the sometimes-capricious nature of free will and the obligations each individual has to their own goals and interests which may shift over time—but bringing a pet home is a commitment with benefits and responsibilities for a lifetime of loving companionship and adventure.

I have benefitted from so many spectacular ‘pet’ relationships that it is not possible to select just one or two to focus on as I reflect on the value and lessons from these connections. Recently I have outlined an entire book that I would like to write to cover this theme of my other-than-human animal Soul companions.

But I would do well to start here and now to spotlight my current pet family of Sophie (a ‘golden’ Shorkie/ Shitzu-Yorkie) and Emily (my orange-white golden-eyed female tabby).

Photo by Anne Lyon

Sophie has accompanied me on seven cross country trips between Colorado Springs and upper New York state, the last of which in 2018 moved us—with Emily too—Back East after over forty years, for me, Out West.  Since then, Sophie and Emily have moved with me two more times until we have arrived in our current rental house in my original hometown village in Western New York.

I am grateful every day, every moment, to Sophie and Emily for their constant love and companionship, especially through moves to locations where I have had few if any immediate local human connections.  As a singleton, retired but still working remotely person living “alone,” I have never actually been or felt alone due to our loving family.

When Sophie was 7 (now 12), she was diagnosed as diabetic. On that day, on hearing the somber news, I actually fainted in the vet’s office and ended up at a hospital, having collapsed ostensibly from dehydration but really from the shock of awareness of my dear friend Sophie’s dire need for special care to save her quality of life. But over time, Sophie’s health condition has proven to be a gift or at least a mixed blessing. We had a terrific vet in Colorado and good friends who helped me research and develop a homemade diet and care plan that, after plenty of trial and error and readjusting after each of our Big Moves, works! (Sophie’s diet, which I have blogged about, will be a chapter in my book!). I cook all of Sophie’s meals from scratch, including a litany of supplements and eye care treatments, and managing her diet along with our daily walks and regularity of routine have helped me improve and manage my own health conditions, plus our unconditional interdependence and love has no parallel.  Right this weekend Sophie is recovering from stitches to her eyelid because of my mistake in trying to trim some hair over her eye (know better!) that nicked her eyelid.  Not fun for either of us, but as with other incidents in our times together, we will get through this with deep love and reciprocity.

Photo by Pamela Flynn

Emily, too, is such a special, loving, quiet, healing cat friend. Initially she and her brother Arthur were feral.  Rescued by a good friend in New Mexico who already had 10 pets, one frigid New Years weekend, my friend Madeline lured them from the subzero desert night where coyotes and loose dogs roamed, onto her enclosed porch, with warm milk and an electric blanket they could sleep on. The next day I drove with them back to Colorado Springs.  Arthur, who was his more petite sister’s guardian angel on earth, survived here only 5 years. He developed a blood clot after dental surgery that took him from us. Gradually Emily has grown into her own mature (14 now) loving self, a constant source of daily cuddles and purr mantras and a regular visitor to Zoom sessions especially with my spiritual community  in New York since Covid-19.

Images (other than photos above) are from Pixabay.com

Animals Are Soul, Too (by Harold Klemp) is the title of a book I enjoy.  Sophie and Emily teach me about cross-species spiritual companionship every day and in many ways.  Truly I cannot imagine having made the recent moves I have needed to make without my Sophie and Emily family. I am many times blessed and grateful. Many other pet friend Souls have come before (and earlier with) them in my life, each with their own amazing tales of love and companionship. But my current family unit of Sophie-Em-and me has brought, on the whole, great joy and comfort to our lives.  Home is where the Heart is, and together we have forged our own way Home.

Golden Eyes: A Pet Reincarnation Tale

My Cat Emily

I had a dear cat companion named la for 13 years. She was an orange-white calico/tabby with gold eyes. Chela and I were very Soul-bonded. She would ride draped around my shoulders as I walked through a room and she was—as most of my dear animal companions have been—my close confidante.

A few weeks after Chela passed away (I had to have her euthanized due to a severe neurological condition), she came to me in a vision between sleeping and waking. She showed me where she was staying: in a clearing in a wooded area with many other animals of various species there too. She introduced me to them from a wooden stage in the clearing and I got up on the stage and said hello to them as well.

Six months or so after Chela’s departure, I had a significant dream. I was returning from visiting a former mentor, a philosophy professor from my early college days in Buffalo who had herself already passed away. As I was closing an iron gate of the castle grounds where I had been visiting my mentor, I knelt down to greet and welcome into my arms a beautiful little female cat—orange and back with white splotches. I felt immediate recognition and familiarity as we greeted each other, so grateful for seeing each other again!

That very day of this dream, the first words out of my then-mentor (my PhD advisor in Anthropology)’s mouth were:

Linda, could you take a kitten?

I answered immediately:

Only if she is orange and black with white splotches!

And my mentor’s next words:

One is!

So, I took home with me that day from my mentor’s home little Ariel. Her orange-white accent stripes intermixed with orange-black calico and white splotches (a tortoise shell Harlequin calico kitty) looked exactly like Chela’s, and she had gold eyes. As Chela before her, Ariel and I were very closely bonded Soul companions, for the next twenty years!

A few years after Ariel had come into my life, I had another significant dream, this one a past-life vision. I dreamed I was a young Archaic Homo Sapiens (like a pre-human simian) boy. I was walking along in a savannah veld region with cliffs alongside the open plain. I hardly had language except for a gew major concepts in my consciousness: “ground”, “sky”, “storm”. As I looked up at the rapidly greening sky overhead (Note: I did not learn until after this dream in this present life that a green sky could mean tornado weather), I ran toward the cliffs and climbed to get into the safety of a dark cave.

While in the cave, the storm clouds quickly amassed and dropped a heavy storm. Looking around in the cave, I saw a pair of golden yellow eyes, looking back at me!

“Tiger!” I thought.

The tiger and myself as a simian boy had both sought refuge from the storm in the same cave. Yet, the Tiger did not harm me. When the storm had passed, we locked eyes with each other again and the Tiger left the cave first.

Then as I was waking from this past life vision, I had yet another brief glimpse from a later lifetime. This time I was an older, African tribal human walking stealthily through a jungle. A lion had spotted me and just as he had launched into the air to attack me, a female tiger jumped into the lion’s path to intervene!

stock images are from pixabay.com

My cat Ariel, like Chela before her (and my golden-eyed Emily today!), loved nothing better than to have me prop up a bed-cover with a pillow beside me to form a cave beside me as I would sleep, especially in cold weather. Ever since this past life visionary experience about the Tiger, I called Ariel, Golden Eyes!

Animals are Soul just as much as you or I. That is my belief based on experience. What about you? Have you had glimpses of other lifetimes with your dear animal Soul companions?

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!

Pets and Rebirth of a Dear Companion

Yesterday I read a post from a favorite blogger about how she was wondering whether seeing her recently passed dog’s collar that showed up on the first day of Hanukkah could be a sign from her beloved companion, perhaps even that he would be coming back, as she had at the time been contemplating finding another puppy .I do believe in reincarnation, and since Animals are Soul, Too (There is a book of that title, by Harold Klemp), our Soul companions that we share our lives with in their animal and our human forms can also return if that is in the highest spiritual interest of all concerned.

I am an animal lover and have had pets all my life. I do recognize that some of them have been with me in more than one animal companion form.  My cat Ariel came to me in such a way that I knew with certainty that she was returning from having been my cat Chela who had passed away around nine months earlier. There are many layers to this story, including dreams I had had when Chela was with me about other lives we had had together going way back to when I was an archaic human boy and she was a Tiger:

Yellow Eyes (the dream, in present tense for better recall):

I am a young boy walking alone in the veld. Language is minimal. I look around, taking stock of the environs. “Sky, storm” I think as I see the sky has a greenish tint and that signifies a violent storm is coming. “Cliff’” I think as I see a wall of cliffs with caves and I climb up there to take shelter from the storm, which swiftly comes with high winds wailing outside the cave. I look around and see a pair of yellow eyes looking back at me. “Tiger.” She also is seeking refuge from the storm. We seem to understand that we are both there for that reason and we do not attack one another.  The storm passes. Tiger leaves the cave, with an appreciative gaze as she leaves.  Later, a different life: I am a young man (indigenous native in a rainforest).  A lion is about to pounce upon me as I am walking through the jungle. Then a Tiger leaps onto the scene and prevents the Lion from reaching me.

Other memories of this same Soul as a white horse  while I am some sort of soldier.

Then fast forward to after Chela’s (as a calico orange female cat–also with Yellow/ Gold Eyes–, my closest companion for 11 years)  passing.  Around nine months later I wake from a dream. I am leaving a castle where I had been visiting a mentor who had recently died; she is who had introduced me to Chela while I was taking an Independent Study in Philosophy with her, Toni.  I look down as I am about to close the gate and see a female cat, ‘black and white with orange blotches’ coming toward me. Excited, I kneel down: “There you are!” and she leaps into my arms; we are so close, so familiar.  That very day of the dream I go to the office of my then mentor, my PhD advisor, Betsy. Her first words to me:

“Linda, do you know anyone who could take a kitten?”

“Not unless it is black and white with orange blotches,” I answered.

“One is!”

images are from pixabay.com

So I met Ariel that day, also with golden eyes, who was with me for the next twenty years. We were as close as Chela and I had been, loving companion Souls who travelled together and loved each other deeply.  She had marks on her forelegs and forehead of an orange calico just like Chela had been, though Ariel was a beautiful Harlequin Tortoise Shell Calico.

Because there is a need for ‘death’ (I call it translation in my faith), there must also be rebirth. We learn through cycles of growth and change.  It is all about love after all, which is reciprocal always or it is not love. Reciprocity and cyclicity are two aspects of the same relationship with Love, Life, and Spiritual Freedom. So I believe.

I welcome YOUR comments and Story!