When the hubs and I moved to Alabama from Chicago back in 2001, we, of course, had a veritable zoo of companion animals: two dogs, two cats, a king snake and a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. My tendency, if left unchecked, is to live life surrounded by animals like Dr. Doolittle. And yes, I even talk to the animals and often I understand what they're telling me, although they don't speak English, but communicate with a combination of sounds, expressions, and body language.
So I was determined not to fill up the wee house we'd inherited with animals like I had when we'd lived in Missouri and Kentucky. And I managed to sustain this for a year.
But in January of 2002, the urge to visit the animal shelter struck me out of the blue. I'd never been to the Calhoun County Animal Shelter, had no idea where it was even located, and most certainly did not want to be adopting ANY MORE ANIMALS. I resisted the urge to act on this impulse, but it only grew stronger and stronger over the next two weeks.
I'm a big believer in listening to my intuition, especially when it's persistent and shouting at me, so even though a trip to the shelter didn't make any logical sense, I looked up the address and paid them a visit.
First stop: the cat room. I walked in and about thirty cats ran over to check me out. Three seconds later, twenty-nine cats decided I wasn't worth their time. The one cat who remained was a beautiful calico and she jumped up into my arms and went, "Meow!!" quite emphatically.
"Hello, kitty." I put her down and she kept jumping up on me...in my lap, on my back, in my arms. This cat really dug me! And she was so enthusiastic.
I asked how long she'd been at the shelter. The volunteer said, "Two weeks."
Two weeks.
That's how long my intuition had been hitting me over the head about visiting the shelter. Had this calico been sending out some sort of psychic signal that I was able to receive? Did we have some kind of extra-sensory connection? It seemed coincidental that I'd been resisting an insane urge to visit the shelter for two weeks and she'd been AT the shelter for TWO weeks.
So the next step was to bring the hubs to meet her. He didn't find her particularly alluring; he liked a long-haired Siamese mix better. But once again, as on my initial visit, when the hubs and I walked into the cat room, every cat rushed us and then every cat but the calico decided they had better things to do.
My husband WAS amazed at how she kept jumping and climbing all over me with such emphatic MEOWs!
So I asked if we could adopt her. The hubs said yes (he rarely says no about these things), but someone else had expressed interest in her and we had to wait a week to see if they'd come back for her.
They didn't. On VALENTINE'S DAY in 2002, the shelter called and said we could adopt the calico if we still wanted her.
How could we not? She was meant to be with us.
I brought her home and I renamed her Zoe. It fit her high energy, enthusiastic personality. If Zoe were a person, she'd be a cheerleader and the president of the welcome wagon. I don't know if she'd ever had kittens before winding up at the shelter, but she is a natural mother. When we wound up adopting a kitten in 2003 and two more in 2004, she treated those kits like her own and still has a strong mother/son bond with Spencer who is now nine.
So do some animals have psychic ability? Or do some people possess a type of extra-sensory radar that is tuned to an animal frequency? I'd like to think so. There are stranger things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
http://worldweaverpress.com/2014/01/14/saved-from-death-row-the-inspiration-for-the-weredog-whisperers-luna/