First off, let me assure you I was raised a skeptic. Born to a military physician’s family, I was well-schooled in logic, reason, and scientific method; we did not brake for psychics. But in adulthood, my skepticism has wavered. Once I saw a psychic who revealed things about me no stranger could know, and more than once I’ve picked up intuitive messages that seemed to come from somewhere else. Communication that science can’t yet explain clearly occurs; mental telepathy between humans has been well documented. But whether it also occurs between species, as animal communicators insist, is a question that confounds even the most open minds. I wanted to know.
A dozen of us gathered one cold Saturday at an unheated stable where horses, goats, cats, dogs, and chickens were available for discourse. I was the sole skeptic. The other participants worked with animals through veterinary clinics, humane societies, guide dog organizations; they believed. Our leader was well-known California communicator Carol Gurney, whose books, tapes, and polished presentation made me wary. I’d expected New Age weirdness. She wasn’t weird; she was a pro.
A former advertising executive, she confessed that mastering these new career skills in midlife had not been easy. Although we are all born with telepathic powers, she said, it takes patience and practice to reclaim them. The actual communication process sounds so simple it’s no wonder people scoff: Get quiet, formulate specific questions, wait for the answers. Like meditation, it’s a matter of chasing away to do lists and slowing your mind down.
We practiced by “sending” a human partner images representing the color Carol suggested. Pink first. I “saw” a fuzzy blanket, but that image was rudely shoved aside by a juicy watermelon. Not quite. My partner said he had “sent” candy hearts. “Ah, but he was sending food, and you got food,” Carol said to build my confidence. Uh huh. Three others had “received” the candy hearts.
“Telepathy feels like you’re talking to yourself,” Carol said. “You have to trust whatever you get.” Individuals get messages differently, as words, images, physical sensations, or emotions. Children are most open to them. Carol described the first time her dog, Jessie, met her friend’s 10-year-old deaf daughter, Monica. Excited, Monica signed, “Papa, this dog can talk!” Her father thought he misunderstood, but she signed it again, then spent the rest of the day relaying the dog’s messages.
Most adults either miss or discount these flashes. With good reason, I discovered. The words we use can’t explain the sensation. I neither “heard,” “saw,” nor “thought” what popped into my mind, and the animals didn’t “talk.” What came in was just there, whole, faster than I could think, and very simple. Simplicity, it turns out, is a problem professional communicators often encounter. Clients expect their animals to deliver a humanlike diatribe, not merely say “I want my red bowl back” or “My blanket itches.”
We asked the animals formula questions: Do you want to talk? (No, they’d rather eat, several “said.”) What do you like? What don’t you like? We worked together, sharing messages from the same animal. It was hard to blurt them out when they seemed, well, silly. But so many were verified by those who knew the animals that we got braver. Then it became a challenge not to embellish. Head down, eyes closed, I “got” the image of one horse backed into a tight corner; I conjured up a story of entrapment, an abusive past. Then I opened my eyes; the horse had turned around and backed into an Lshaped section of his stall.
Going solo was intimidating. I tried talking with some chickens; no luck. Ready to give up, I crouched down to pet a black kitten just because he was cute. Then, barn, in my mind: “You should be talking to me.” It startled me; I hadn’t seen the gray kitten. Now she’d jumped on my knee and was climbing up my arm and into the hood of my coat, where she sat for the next hour and a half. I asked what she liked to do. I got back: “Help sick animals.” If that were true, I figured she’d know Bobby, a horse recovering from surgery. I made his stall my last stop. Bobby “told” me he was cold, and that his person didn’t visit enough. Wherever I moved, he moved to stand nose to nose with me. The kitten sat forward on my shoulder, purring the entire time.
The stories that made no sense to the recipient were the most telling. The stable owner, Mindy, confirmed what she could. Bobby, for example, should have had his blanket on. (He didn’t.) One woman reported, with an embarrassed shrug, that she received a shiny, round, yellow image, while a small goat “said” it was “an unimportant goat” because it “couldn’t go.” It turned out this goat was the only one in its pen deemed too small to be shipped away for breeding; the others had been marked with a gold ear tag. Small stuff, I suppose, but evidence was accumulating.
The biggest stretch was long-distance communication with each other’s animals. We exchanged pictures but offered no guidance. My partner, Ilga,had no picture, so she scribbled a brief description of her dog, Maxine, on paper. Before I finished reading, I felt a disturbing sensation of strong shoulders moving back and forth, hitting against walls of a very small area. Then I felt suffocating heat in a high, confined space, like a truck cab, and a desperate attempt to get air. This hurt; tears came. Then I felt fine again.
I relayed my experience. Ilga said that Maxine had come from the humane society, which got her from a hunter who mistreated her, and that she had one major problem: riding in the car. She would frantically throw herself from side to side, against the doors. No one knew why.
Ilga studied a picture of my cat, Biscuits, who had died just before the workshop; she described his habits. She asked him-his spirit, perhaps?-to tell her something meaningful only to me. She got “a scratch and a whisper.” Did that mean anything?
Yes, in fact. I was whispering to him, and scratching his favorite place behind his ear, as he died.
So what’s happening here? The common explanation: We are like radio receivers, capable of synchronizing our brain waves and tuning in to all sorts of information. In Communicating with Animals, investigative reporter and Jormer Washington Post editor Arthur Myers offers copious examples, including poetry ostensibly communicated by animals to their owners. At Spring Farm CARES, a New York animal refuge, proprietor Bonnie Reynolds reported “receiving” a design for a new building from one of the resident cats. She drew a sketch of the design and gave it to the builder, who built it as drawn.
Poetry? Architecture? I’m still skeptical. But I now look at animals in a very different way. Science may not yet be able to define what we share, but whatever it is demands my respect. I no longer feel as separate and superior; I feel as if I’ve been introduced into a quiet, kindred society, where humans and animals cooperate and negotiate things like food, clothing, and going for a walk.
After the workshop, Carol offered to communicate with Biscuits. Some of the things she received could have been deduced from the scanty information I had provided, but others she had no logical way of knowing. She said Biscuits wanted his remains buried in a special corner of the garden, visible from windows, under a blooming tree. I had already planned exactly this, but had told no one.
So whose mind was she reading? And where does one mind stop and another begin? And who really knows?
Cathy Madison is a senior editor of Utne Reader.
