Animals and the Afterlife (35 page)

As soon as I laid eyes on all of the rats, I just
knew
which one was supposed to be with me. I had been worried that I wouldn’t know which rat to choose, but as soon as I met them, I instantly felt drawn to one rat in particular. I actually felt as if I
recognized
her, though I couldn’t imagine why. She looked just like all the other rats in her litter, yet I felt there was something different about her, something
familiar
.

Then, when I reached into the cage, she was the only one who climbed right up onto my hand, and she didn’t want to climb off. I took her home and named her Sweetheart.

Even at the time, I was amazed at how effortless it was to decide which rat was destined to become my companion. I was usually a
very
indecisive child, but in this situation, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind which animal was supposed to come home with me. I felt as if I already knew her. Perhaps I did.

W
HEN
I
INTERVIEWED
professional animal communicators, virtually all of them shared stories of animals who had died and then returned. Many of them had never believed such things were possible until they began communicating with animals and learned of such things from the animals themselves. Animal communicator Gail De Sciose shared the following:

I have often gotten details in communications with animals in spirit where a dog, for example, will say, “Don’t throw away my red bowl, because I may be back and I will want that bowl.” Then the people later confirm that the dog did have a red bowl.

Gail has had dozens of cases of animals who have returned to their people. She explained:

Some of them were able to give a lot of direction about what their physical bodies would look like, or where we would find them, or the actual circumstances of their birth.

In other cases, the return came as a complete surprise. In Gail’s words:

I had a client in the film industry who, while on location for a shoot, found a stray kitten. Although the kitten didn’t look anything like her former cat, my client had the sense that it might be him. She asked me to check with him telepathically and he confirmed that he was her former cat. In this case, the cat found
her
, but it felt to her as though she had just stumbled into him.

In a similar case, Jojo Pomeroy of Colorado, who runs a dog day- care and homestyle boarding business called Noah’s Bark, consulted Gail when her beloved cat, Cooter, passed. Jojo explained:

My very first cat companion was a calico kitten I named Cooter. She and I shared a special bond for twelve wonderful years. When Cooter passed away, I spoke with her in spirit through Gail De Sciose, my animal communicator. She said she would not come back to live with me for some time because she really loved it where she was in the afterlife. I agreed to whatever she wanted as long as she was happy.

About seven years later, I heard the loudest crying I’d ever heard outside my office window. Being concerned, I went out to investigate. Just under the window in the bushes stood a small calico kitten demanding to be noticed. She definitely got my attention. There was something so familiar about her that it was frightening.

I knelt down to speak with her; she came to me immediately, climbing up my leg to wrap herself around my neck. At first contact she stopped crying and started purring. I detached her from my neck so that I could get a good look at her. The way she looked right into my eyes jolted my heart.

I brought the kitten inside the office to show her to the other ladies. I wasn’t planning to add any more animals to my current animal family. The other ladies didn’t want a kitten, so I put her back outside. I went inside again to prepare to go to lunch and the crying was louder than before. This kitten was not going to be ignored.

I went outside again with a friend following me to see the kitten. As I knelt down, the kitten hissed and spit at my friend and then flared her tail. At this point, I was no longer doubtful whether this kitten and I knew each other. I knew who she was. The kitten again wrapped herself around my neck.

I made an emergency panicked phone call to Gail, since I felt I needed permission from my other animals to bring the kitten home.

Not only did Jojo get their permission to bring the kitten home, but Gail confirmed that the kitten was indeed Cooter. Jojo recalled:

When I drove home with her, my heart was singing. When we arrived, all three of my cats were waiting at the top of the stairs to greet us. There was no hissing or spitting from anyone. It was as if she had always lived with us. However, she decided that just in case I wasn’t convinced she was really Cooter, she would show me all the old habits of Cooter’s. Then I wouldn’t be able to deny that she had returned. I had a crash course that weekend of Cooter revisited.

Y
ET ANOTHER CASE
involved a dog named Mack. When he passed, his devoted humans, Allan Dominik (a government auditor) and Yvonne Dominik (an artist) of Manitoba, Canada, consulted animal communicator Gail De Sciose as well. In Gail’s words:

The story of Mack is wonderful because Yvonne and Allan regularly spoke with Mack in spirit. He gave us a lot of direction about how we would find him and what he would look like. They did, in fact, find him at the time of year when he said he would come back and exactly the way he said he would come back. He has the same characteristics and does a lot of the same things that Mack did that were sort of quirky things.

When I spoke with Yvonne Dominik about Mack’s return, she shared the entire magical story. She and her husband, Allan, had never even considered the possibility that Mack might return to them—that is, until they sought the assistance of animal communicators to help deal with their grief. In addition, Yvonne learned to communicate with Mack’s spirit directly and kept a journal of these communications. She explained:

I remember him saying to me over and over, “I will come back and bring you lots of love and joy,” and he sure has. He wanted to help me on my spiritual path and he wanted to teach me to trust. He said that love is everything and not to ever fear losing anyone. He told me not to worry. He said, “Stop worrying about my return; things will work out perfectly.” I basically had to start trusting that it was going to happen at the right time.

Via these communications, Mack expressed that he would be unique, but Yvonne and Allan did not understand what this meant at first. Then, at the time of year when Mack had said he would be returning, they received an unexpected phone call about a litter of rescued puppies that needed homes. They were all black except one, who was
uniquely
tan with black markings. That was exactly what Mack had looked like. He, too, had been born in a litter of rescued black puppies in which he was uniquely tan with black markings. Allan and Yvonne knew they had found Mack. He had returned to them with the exact same personality as before and is now called Shiloh, which means “gift from God.”

D
IANE
N
EWBURG
, a legal secretary in Southern California, explained that her rat MacGregor had actually been with her
four different times;
he just kept coming back to her, and she kept the same name for him each time. (There was a time in my life when I would have perhaps written her off as a nut for even
thinking
such a thing. However, I happen to know Diane personally. She is a very levelheaded person and has considerable evidence upon which to base this assertion.)

MacGregor’s latest return came quite unexpectedly, via an acquaintance of Diane’s named Celeste, who also has many companion rats. When Celeste scheduled a routine appointment with animal communicator Patty Summers to communicate with her rats, she had no idea that she would receive an amazing request from one of the new baby rats under her care. Patty told her that this particular baby said he needed to get back to the woman he had been with before (in other words,
before he had died and been reborn
). He told her that, in his former life, he had lived with a woman in a house full of rats living in open cages on tables. He then described a woman with curly blonde hair and glasses, and said he needed to get back to her because he had returned to be with her again.

Celeste thought for a moment, wondering what this rat was talking about. Then it dawned on her—that description fit Diane Newburg
precisely!
Not only does she have curly blonde hair and glasses, but she also has a house full of rats living in open cages on tables. There’s no way Patty Summers could have known this, as she had never met or spoken with Diane Newburg, and in fact, didn’t even know she
existed
. She had simply delivered the message as she had received it.

Celeste then consulted another animal communicator, Sue Good- rich. Sue confirmed that this baby rat was indeed Diane’s former rat,
MacGregor,
who had been with her three times already and was back to be with her again! Needless to say, Diane adopted him, renamed him MacGregor, and they lived happily ever after.

T
HE ANIMAL COMMUNICATORS
I
INTERVIEWED
told me that their clients sometimes asked if their departed animals planned to return to them. These animal communicators stressed the importance of not being too attached to outcome or trying to
force
the animal to come back before either the animal or the person is ready. They explained that everything always works out in proper, Divine timing, so there is no need to worry. They also emphasized that they got this information
not
from any specific belief system, but from talking to the animals themselves.

Animal communicator Jeri Ryan, Ph.D., shared the following advice:

There is one thing that I really want to share with people, and I’ve heard this across the board. When an animal says, “Yes, I do want to come back to you and I will be a cat again,” or, “I will be a dog again,” or, “This time, instead of a cat, I’ll be a dog,” or something like that—the people will say, “Oh, what color will you be? When are you coming? How will I make sure that I don’t miss you? I don’t want to miss you.” It’s an honest concern. They love them so much, they don’t want to miss them.

The animal will say, inevitably, “Don’t worry about it; I’ll find you.” What this means is that it is the spirit that decides what it needs in a given lifetime, so the spirit then chooses to be with certain people or certain life situations. So, if they make the decision to get to their former person, they are going to get there. We don’t have to worry. Usually what happens is that the people will one day start thinking,
Oh, I think I’ll go to the shelter,
or they will start looking at ads in the paper, or a dog turns up on the doorstep, or a friend calls and says, “Guess what! I have found this incredible animal and I kept thinking about you.” Something that we call serendipitous will happen, but it really came from the animal spirit and the intention to get back to this place.

I
N ADDITION TO ANIMAL COMMUNICATORS
, I found that ordinary people had plenty to share on this subject. As I talked with people from all walks of life and varying religious backgrounds, I compiled a surprising number of stories of animals who had died and then seemingly returned to be reunited with their loved ones, often completely unexpectedly. They usually returned as the same type of animal, but sometimes they returned as entirely different species. The one thing that remained constant was their essence, their soul.

The animals often seemed to retain past-life memories (remembering their people, other animals in the household, their favorite toys and hiding places); and when they returned, they usually had the same unique behaviors and interests as before. They often (though not always) had very similar appearances with the same unique, distinguishing markings. Along with the stories, many people submitted photographs of the animals in both their previous and current incarnations, and their appearances remained strikingly similar, beyond just the usual colors and markings for a specific breed. Perhaps this was their way of letting their people know that it was really them!

The thought-provoking and often heartwarming stories that I’ve collected over the years are, at times, extremely convincing, providing evidence that goes beyond chance or wishful thinking. Some of the stories that follow are taken from the files of professional animal communicators and their clients, and others have been submitted by ordinary people whose lives have been touched by seemingly extraordinary events. So, it appears that cats may, indeed, have nine lives after all!