I had a dream. It wasn’t just a fleeting nightscape. It had a very persistent voice saying, “You’re going to get a cat.”
I ignored it. It made no sense.
At the time, I had no space in my life for a cat. Or a person. I had one closet in a two-room apartment. I was in my late twenties, a type “A” New Yorker, crawling my way up from the bottom of the barrel of the movie business. I had enough trouble figuring out what to feed myself; I could hardly take on the responsibility of another being.
But the dream came back again and again. “You’re going to get a cat.”
“Impossible,” I groaned, rolling over, burying my head under the pillow. Night shoots made daylight sleep essential. I clung to unconsciousness as if my life depended on it.
The dream didn’t care. It persisted, with the same annoying words, on and off for weeks, until finally I sat up in bed and yelled out to the dream gods, “Well, if that’s true, the cat has to come to me! I don’t have time to go to the shelter.”
That seemed to quiet the dream gods with their feline messages.
Then, one midnight, a few weeks later, I heard a sound—sharp, scratching, like someone breaking into my bedroom window. I lived alone on the ground floor of my Upper West Side of Manhattan apartment on 98th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. The window faced the alley. I had been burgled twice, and the dread gripped me again.
I grabbed my phone and in my toughest New York voice, yelled at the window, “I’ve already called 911! You better run!” I added other words I won’t repeat here.
Silence.
I shook in fear. Silence was scarier. Then. Then breaking through the midnight silence – the tiniest little—
“Meeeow,”
“Oh, no,” I whispered to myself, throwing on my night gown.
What should I do? Ignore it and go on with my manic life? Or step outside, open the door, and have my universe discombobulated?
I have nothing that a cat needs. No litter, no cat food.
Wait. I have milk.
And it was twenty degrees outside. I can’t leave this little thing to starve. I’ll just give him some milk.
Funny that I knew it was a him.
My hands shook, the way they do when you know your whole stupid lifestyle is about to change. I poured some milk into a cereal bowl and headed outside my apartment without shoes.
I opened the back door to the alley and placed the milk on the ground near my bare feet. The orange kitten looked over at me, leapt down from my windowsill, walked past the bowl I presented, and kitten-padded right into my apartment.
I had a six AM call time. I calculated how much earlier I would have to rise to get some kind of thing that could double as a cat box and some kitty litter from the all-night Korean vegetable stand on the corner that would cost eight times as much as it should. What would he do in a strange house? Would he destroy everything in my apartment before I returned from my twelve-hour workday on the set?
“What have I done?”
And other logical thoughts flashed through my mind. But I was clearly no longer in control. I watched helplessly as he made himself at home on my bed.
I named him Wolfie. Short for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Wolfie lived with me – and loved me — for seventeen years. Through every twist and turn of my crazy life.
Looking back, I am so glad I didn’t let my logical mind rule that night. Logic has its place, but it wasn’t the right tool for this life-changing moment. Wolfie, with his brilliant, intuitive knowing, opened my eyes to the power of listening to something more profound than logic. He was here to teach me how to trust my own intuition. Like the first moment he laid eyes on me, it was as if he knew he was coming home.
I came to rely on Wolfie’s intuitive knowing in so many situations. For example, he had better taste in men than I did. He could sense the good-hearted ones and the ones who would only bring great pain.
His intuitive instincts were uncanny. I even began to play a game with him; I would lay out three movie scripts on the floor, projects I was considering. He would walk across all three, sometimes making more than one pass. Then he would sit down on one. He couldn’t read, but he could feel! He always made the right choice.
Wolfie was my teacher in learning to listen to my own intuitive senses. Not that I didn’t continue to learn the hard way, but I did slowly, but surely, BEGIN to listen. To pay attention to what my senses were receiving. Wolfie helped me tune to my intuitive channel.
In my book, The Human-Animal Connection, Chapter Four, “Sense-Sational Awareness,” explores how connecting to your intuitive self begins with attuning to the wisdom of the senses. These are your inner feelings, your sense of knowingness. The more you use this “secret” power, the easier life becomes. I finally learned I don’t have to make every mistake in the book of life; I can skip a few dead ends–if I listen.
There are countless stories that I mention in my book of animals being able to detect the presence of incoming natural disasters sooner than our current technology allows. I quote Veterinarian Linda Bender, who tells the story of the 2004 tsunami that struck Indonesia. People later reported that “cicadas stopped rattling and birds stopped singing. Dogs refused to go outdoors. Elephants trumpeted in alarm and stampeded towards the hills. Relative to the human population, very few animals were drowned. They seemed to know what was coming and what to do about it.”
Deer, for example, will often stop and kneel on the ground just before an earthquake. “In the 1970s, Chinese seismologists began training people in remote areas where warnings couldn’t reach them to watch for and report signs from animals, which saved many lives. During World War II bombing raids over England, many Londoners reported that their dogs gave them warnings half an hour before the air raids sounded. Clearly, we should consider animals part of our early warning system and pay more attention to dramatic changes in their behavior, especially with herd animals.” (Chapter 4).
I hope these little stories inspire you to pay attention to the intuitive voices in your life. They will not lead you astray.
And I would love to hear your story. How have animals guided you?
