Mistakes I have made
After looking over this website, something about it just didn't sit right. Every story and testimonial I share is completely true, and they do, as I had hoped, seem to educate and inspire people about the wonders of animal communication and the mysterious wisdom of the animals we all so clumsily share our lives with. But I realize in hindsight that it also presents something of a distorted view of this work I do. While animal communication is undoubtedly an inspiring, awesome, and worthwhile way to (try to) earn a living, communicating with the animals is NOT always quite as glamorous or effective as some of these carefully selected stories make it sound!! It occurred to me that sharing some of the stories about how I have fumbled and failed in my efforts to communicate with animals might actually do more to illustrate how the animals communicate with us than all of these grand success stories put together!
“The only people who never fail are those who never try.” ~Ilka Chase
So I've humbly added this “un-testimonial” page to my website, in an effort to provide potential clients an utterly honest and balanced view of both the remarkable benefits of animal communication and the limitations of my own sputtering mind. (I know, I know, marketing just isn't and will never be my strong point. But honesty, I hope, might be!)
An animal communication session I completely botched
This is my absolute favorite “how animal communication can go dreadfully wrong” story, which I now share at every introductory workshop I teach. Hannah is a fierce, dark tortoise-shell cat who I've communicated regularly with for a few years. Usually her person called me because Hannah had suddenly peed outside the litterbox or brought some grisely rodent carcass into the house. Hannah only seemed to do these things when she had something important to tell (or request of) her person, and for a long time sessions with her were brief, blunt, and very effective. The behaviors stopped once she'd made her point, and Hannah seemed to like knowing how to get her person's attention, fast.
This time, Hannah's person (who I'll call Ruth), was in a hurry. Apparently, a new au pair (a foreign nanny) had moved in, and Hannah had just peed in the young woman's room. Ruth was in a hurry, and the room stank. “I don’t care why she peed right now,” Ruth said over the phone. “Can you please just find out WHERE she peed so I can get it cleaned up?”
Well, that seemed like a reasonable request to me. I only had a few minutes, so I plunged right in. I closed my eyes, and there Hannah was, looking majestic and aloof, as usual. “Hi, Hannah,” I said... getting right to the point. “Where did you pee?”
The “answer” flashed through my head, strikingly vivid. From a floor-eye view, I could see the short nubs of a bluish grey carpet. A pale wall rose up from the floor to my right. And right there, where the carpet met the wall, I saw a dark cat daintily peeing. I admit, I was a bit surprised, both by the vivid realness of the image (the carpet looked so real I could almost feel it), and by Hannah’s readiness to help us out. I must have caught her in a particularly gracious mood. “Boy I'm good at this,” I thought to myself proudly.
“Ok,” I relayed to Ruth. “It's the room with the blue grey carpet, near the middle of the room, right against the wall.”
“We don't have any carpet in this house, anywhere.” Ruth informed me, carefully, as if trying not to hurt my feelings.
“Oh.” Now I was really puzzled. I was well used to “seeing” far stranger things than blue grey carpet in these conversations with the animals, and having them validated by the people on the phone. And I hadn’t just seen that carpet... I had felt it and practically tasted it it seemed so real!! “Hmmmm...” I groped. “Well, let me ask her again.” I was, certainly, used to these picture conversations with the animals not making sense immediately, and usually found it helpful to repeat the question until I understood the answer.
So I flushed the whole scene out of my mind and started over. There was Hannah. “Could you tell me again where you peed?” I asked her politely. Again, I saw the blue grey carpet stretching across the floor. The pale walls. But this time, I saw a dark cat literally bounding around the room, peeing here and there and everywhere!!
Ruth groaned when she heard about all the peeing. But I was still puzzled by that mysterious carpet. “I have an idea,” I suggested brightly. “Describe to me the room where you smell the pee, and I’ll show that to her, and we'll see what she shows me about that room, just to be sure.” Hardwood floor, antique bed, oriental rug, gotcha. I showed a room of that description to Hannah, and immediately the scene in my mind changed. We were under something low and dark... must be the bed. Hannah showed me herself sitting next to something bulky on the hardwood floor. Her nose was wrinkled as if repulsed by a smell. Suddenly I understood. “Something under the bed smells, and it bothers her, so she peed under the bed,” I triumphantly told Ruth. Ruth was not pleased... she had stored a few things of value under that bed, but one pee stain under a bed was certainly preferable to ten or twelve scattered through a room. My good deed for the day accomplished, I hung up the phone.
But I just couldn’t get that blue grey carpet out of my mind. As a professional animal communicator, I HAVE to trust what I “see” in my mind... my integrity and my livelihood depend on it. And twice I had seen and felt a distinct and vivid carpet that was not there. This worried me, immensely. So I centered myself, closed my eyes, and zoomed in again on Hannah. “Hannah, what's up with the carpet you showed me?” I asked, a bit indignant.
Now, I know cats in real life don’t really laugh. But this dark, fierce-eyed cat in my mind was LAUGHING at me uproariously. Feeling a bit cross now, I asked her why she was laughing. “You took it and ran,” she replied, the words rippling through my mind. “You took it and ran with it!”
Now what was that supposed to mean? I took WHAT? And ran WHERE? Grumpy, humiliated, exasperated and confused, I sulked for a few minutes, brooding on the saucy opaqueness of the Cat People. Where had I gone wrong? As soon as I began to review the session, I began to understand. I had spoken with Ruth on the phone, and like a rookie had gotten caught up in her urgency and emotion. Instead of “meeting” Hannah in a neutral and respectful fashion, introducing myself and inquiring after her health, I had barged into Hannah’s mind demanding to know “where she had peed”! I didn’t ask her IF she had peed outside the litter box. I didn’t ask her how she was feeling. I just yelled at her to tell me where she had peed. Groaning, smacking my forehead, I realized that I might have gotten away with such rudeness with a dog. Maybe even with a really kind horse. But never, ever with a cat!
Tail deep between my legs, I closed my eyes one more time. “Uhm, sorry Hannah,” I began. “I was really rude, wasn’t I?” Yup. “Can you, um, if you wouldn’t mind... I mean if you don’t mind my knowing... just so I can understand exactly HOW obnoxious and obtuse I’ve been today... would you mind telling me where you’ve been peeing lately?” And the answer came. The answer I really didn’t want. She showed me a litter box! White plastic. Half full of blue grey cat litter. Suddenly I understood.
I had asked her where she had peed. She had truthfully showed me a litterbox the first time. But I was so set on seeing a ROOM, my mind had turned the litter into carpet and the white plastic side into a wall. And Hannah had let me. I had asked her again, and she had truthfully shown me herself peeing all around the litterbox “room.” No wonder she had been so happy to show me where she had peed!
I called Ruth back. What color was her litterbox? White. What color was her cat litter? Bluish grey. Ouch...! Now the images made sense. But if Hannah hadn’t peed outside the litterbox, then what was Ruth smelling in that room? Suddenly I remembered the image of Hannah under the bed, wrinkling her nose at a bad smell. Well, sure enough. Ruth figured out that the new nanny was from some European country with different hygenic standards than middle class USA. The young woman had stored a suitcase full of unwashed clothes under the bed and that smell is what had filled the room with the suspicous aroma. Mystery solved. Hannah had answered my questions honestly and accurately, and I had completely mistranslated her every word!
Needless to say, I did not charge anything for that session. While these sorts of distorted mistranslations are happily rare, they certainly can happen any time I get off my center and start charging around trying to save the day and be a hero. And I think this story is a particularly wonderful illustration of the difficulty, and the power, and the subtle, mysterious grace of this silent language the animals speak. Oh, I still have so much to learn! I always will.
“Good judgement comes from experience. And experience-well that comes from poor judgement.” ~Anon.
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” ~Confucious
