MyStory Pet Tales, II

What about your own MyStory pet tales? What gifts and lessons have your beloved animal Soul companions brought to your life? Are there some stories about your pet Friends that have been meaningful episodes or chapters from your Life Story? I invite you to journal, write about, or share with a loved one—human or otherwise—about your special, MyStory pet tales.

Indeed, I invite you to start a new journal, which you can call MyStory, for you to explore and collect some of the most meaningful tales of your life’s journey in relation to your major life themes.

Since Pets has been such a prominent theme in my life, it will take this and maybe a few more posts about my pet memoires to explore the underlying mystery of MyStory in relation to at least some of my other-than-human loved ones.

Here’s a story that definitely belongs in my corpus of MyStory Pet Tales”

“Yellow Eyes”

Some thirty years ago while I was completing doctoral work in Arizona, I was preparing to teach an anthropology module about hominid evolution when I had a very significant past-life ‘story dream’: a dream with a fully developed narrative.

In this dream, I am an archaic homo sapiens boy walking along in an open veld. I only have a rudimentary language, with some basic nouns and verbs but little or no syntax. I look up and think “sky” then “storm,” seeing that the sky is a greenish hue. (BTW It was only long AFTER this dream that I ever learned a green sky could precede tornadic weather.) To my right then in the dream I see “cave” up on a cliff side, and I scramble up the cliff to take shelter from the storm in the cave. Clouds darken and the storm rages outside the cave. I sense a presence and look around me in the cave, seeing a pair of eyes: “yellow eyes”, “tiger”; also taking shelter from the storm. We are each wary of one another but we seem to make an agreement not to harm one another while waiting for the storm to pass. As soon as it has abated, I step backward to allow the Tiger to leave the cave, eyeing me again on her way out.

As I am waking from this dream memory, another, seemingly later life incident flashes also in my awareness. I am a young African man walking along on a jungle trail. A lion leaps to attack me from my left, but at the same time a tiger leaps out to repel the lion!  As I am waking, I am thinking gratefully again: Yellow Eyes!

Emily

These story dreams truly felt like they were “past life” memories.  Then, flash way forward as I have shared loving and deeply meaningful relationships with a series of feline companions in this life who each, so it has happened, have had yellow/ gold eyes: Chela (13 yrs.), Ariel (20 yrs.), and currently Emily (now 14).

I had these dreams while beautiful Ariel was in my life: a female tortoise-shell calico.  The story about how she and I found each other is as significant as my archaic Yellow Eyes dreams. It also started from a dream story:

I am (in this dream) leaving a castle grounds where I have been visiting my former philosophy professor mentor who had recently passed away. It was this professor, Dr. Antoinette Paterson from Buffalo, who had introduced me to my beloved cat Chela over 13 years prior.  As I go to close the large, wrought iron gate of the castle grounds on my way out, I look down and see this beautiful female cat walking toward me. She is black with orange splotches and white on her paws and on a blaze under her chin. We recognize each other very familiarly and I kneel down to greet her as she comes over and jumps into my arms.

After waking from this castle dream, I went to campus where I was then in graduate school.  The first person I saw on campus that day was my then Anthropology professor-mentor PhD advisor, Betsy.  The first words out of my advisor’s mouth to me that morning:

Betsy: “Linda, can you take a kitten?”

My answer: “Only if she is black and white with orange splotches!”

Betsy: “One of them is!”

I went over to my advisor’s home and of all the litter of kittens she had acquired, one was timidly hiding out in a dresser bureau drawer. When we looked at each other I knew right away, this was Ariel.  The orange tiger striping on her forelegs and crown had similar patterns to my earlier Chela who had passed away about six months before. And her eyes: yes, they were golden.

images (except my Emily) are from pixabay.com

During cold weather (or relatively cold, in Arizona) or when I would need to leave Ariel on her own for several hours, I would prop up a firm pillow on my bed under a blanket so Ariel could cuddle up either by my side or on her own in this Cave for warmth and shelter.  After my archaic homo sapiens dream, I would sometimes address Ariel while she was in this Cave as Yellow Eyes.

So what MyStory messages do I take away from these dreams and experiences with my beloved cat Friends? I believe in reincarnation and that animals are Soul, too.  Pet reincarnation, for me, is quite real. I feel deeply blessed and ever grateful.

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!