Reassurance from Beyond

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It's not unusual for me to get my messages from Spirit in the form of song lyrics – though it sometimes takes a  while to realise it's a message when a few lines repeat over and over in my brain. It could just be an ear-worm.

Yesterday, even though I knew very well what the date was, and it was much on my mind, it didn't occur to me to attach any significance to this chorus I kept 'hearing' all day, over and over and over:

So fare thee well, my own true love.
We'll meet another day, another time.
It's not the leaving that's grieving me,
but my true love who's bound to stay behind.

Then this morning it finally hit me. Of course!

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of my husband Andrew's death.

(And yes, I have received plenty of indication that he's happy and busy, working with the angels; as well as plenty of indication that he still keeps a close eye on me.)

Animal Reincarnation

[Republished from a MySpace blog.]

I've been hesitating about reposting this one here. Firstly because it's long, and that's supposed to be a no-no in blogging; secondly because I'm afraid it may be a bit 'out there' for my readers here. The MySpace blog where this and the previous post first appeared is specifically for people who have asked me to be a teacher and mentor to them in metaphysical matters. But I shouldn't make assumptions about my readers here, and everyone's free to have their own opinions anyway – and to read or not read, for that matter.

The previous post would not be complete without this one.


My Constant Companion

1. Guinivere

This story starts with my cat Guinivere, who shared my life from when she was a six-week-old kitten until she died at the age of 18.

I was married to my first husband, Don. We must have been about twelve months into our three-year marriage, as we were living in the flat at Armadale ( a suburb of Melbourne, Australia), our second and last home together. I was working as a cataloguer at Brighton Children's Library. I was twenty-three.

One of our regulars, a boy called Branko, came into the library and told us the family cat had just had kittens and he was looking for people to take them. They were too little to leave their mother yet, but he told us all about them, how many boys and how many girls and what colours. I'd always wanted a cat, but my little brother used to get asthma and we weren't allowed pets. My mother thought the fur would upset him. Now I was grown up and married, I could have what I wanted. Don was a cat-lover too, so I didn't hesitate. I asked for the grey male.

Two weeks later Branko took me to his home after work to collect my kitten. There was only one left – a tabby female. Someone else had taken the one I ordered. Branko was only eight years old and no-one else was home; it was fait accomplit. And I did want a cat.

The Universe knows what it's doing! No cat could have been more perfect for me. I love all cats, but she was THE cat in my life – forever supreme, even now. She was an amazingly aware animal, though I didn't know that yet. It would take me months to begin understanding her rare intelligence. Meanwhile I decided to call her Guinivere partly because it was a royal name. As far as I could see, she was just a little tabby moggy. I thought the name would bestow some dignity on her.

She became bold, beautiful, and inquisitive. One of her favourite games was to run towards me, stop right in front of me and then take a great vertical spring straight up in the air to land on my chest – and of course in my arms. She loved to sit on my shoulder, and would stay there as I went about my activities. When I was eating, her paw would dart out to try and steal mouthfuls from my fork. One time, her furry little foot followed the fork right into my mouth!

Marriage to Don was one of those youthful mistakes. I was afraid no-one else would ever ask me. He, nine years older, was afraid of missing the boat. It didn't take long to realise we had too little in common, and we separated after eighteen months. He decided to go to Sydney and find a new life; so I didn't have to fight to be the one to keep Guinivere – though I would have. We managed to part fairly amicably; he even helped me find a new flat in Balaclava.

'Take care of Rosemary,' he said to Guinivere, giving her a goodbye pat, 'And scratch all her boyfriends.' She followed both instructions. If someone she didn't know came down the path by my flat, she would growl like a dog. If I was sad, she would lie on my lap or my chest, gaze into my face and purr until I felt better. If any of my dates entered the flat, she would jump up and scratch them viciously on the leg. Until Bill. She never did that to him. For some weeks, though, she pointedly ignored him. Then one evening, after he drove me home from work and stopped to get the shopping out of the boot while I went ahead to unlock the door of my little flat, Guinivere waited for him and accompanied him down the path instead of rushing to the door with me as usual to get a feed. He was very touched.

We always said the animals made up our minds for us. Bill had a beautiful German Shepherd called Gigi who went everywhere with him. She was really a gentle dog, but she was jealous of his girlfriends and discouraged them by standing on her hind legs, putting her paws on their shoulders and snarling softly in their faces. After that it was impossible to convince them she wasn't dangerous! But when she met me, she sniffed my hand and let me pat her, and then nuzzled me affectionately. Even Bill was surprised. But I couldn't have dogs where I lived, and when Bill went overseas for a few weeks, Gigi stayed with his parents, which was where he had been living too. When he came back, they begged him to leave her with them, and in many ways it was the most practical solution. She died in her sleep a few years later, after a happy life.

Guinivere became our cat rather than mine, and moved with us, first to Brighton, just opposite my work, and then to Beaumaris where we lived for a year before our marriage and twenty-two years after it, in two different houses in succession. We needed a bigger one after we acquired, in turn, a Scotch Collie, a teenage foster-son, and two small sons of our own. Later we adopted a stray black-and-tan bitzer whom we called Sambo, because Steve, my youngest, fell in love with him. Like all cats worth their salt, Guinivere quickly established her supremacy. Sambo was a good-natured little dog, and he was so pleased to have a home and a family that he was content to be lowest in the pecking order. But that was when my boys were already going to school. It was before they were born that Lassie arrived.

I had been scared of dogs since childhood, and big dogs scared me most of all. Which is ironic in view of the fact that I eventually fell in love with the biggest dog I ever met. Nothing happened to make me so scared; I was, as my swimming teacher told my father, 'a naturally timid child'. (Yes, I was scared of swimming too.) I'd learnt not to show the dog phobia too obviously, and when our friend Peter was moving away and needed a home for his beautiful Lassie, I was persuaded that she was a gentle, obedient dog, and that Bill would be the one to look after her. I knew Bill would love to have another dog.

We sat in the kitchen with Peter, Lassie lying by his chair, giving her time to become accustomed to us and our home. Everything was peaceful until Guinivere walked into the room, and Lassie suddenly sprang to her feet and made a dive for her. She cornered the cat under the table, but almost as quickly I was on my feet too. In one stride I was across the room. I grabbed Lassie's collar, hauled her off, whacked her across the nose and said, 'Don't you EVER touch that cat again!' I didn't even stop to think; it was pure reflex.

That was the end of my fear of dogs. Lassie and I became loving friends. She never did attack Guinivere again but I'm afraid I can't say the same in reverse. That cat knew she was safe thereafter, and had a nasty trick of waiting in some high vantage point and leaping down as Lassie wandered past, to land on top of the poor dog. She would rake her claws across Lassie's back, swiftly and hard, then leap straight up to her possie again, unreachable. Even then, Lassie never retaliated. Apart from that little exercise they maintained a sort of armed truce for many months, until Lassie was hit by a car, was away at the vet's a few days, and came home with her hind leg in plaster. Guinie went up and sniffed it, rubbed noses with Lassie and made sympathetic murmurs, and after that they were friends.

She was a naughty little cat in other ways too. When my first child, David, was a baby, I used to put him outside in his pram under a tree next to the house, to get some fresh air and sunshine as he slept. When he woke, I'd go and bring him in. Guinivere was supposed to stay outside in the daytime. She learned to imitate the baby's waking cry so well that I would go to the door, open it, and she would dart inside. David would turn out to be fast asleep still.

I've seen her crouch down just outside the lounge room window in nesting season and imitate the cry of a baby bird. When the mother flew down to investigate, she pounced. She didn't get that one; I dashed outside immediately and made her drop the bird before it was harmed. Eventually I was able to train her that mice were fair game but birds were off limits. I've never been able to train any other cat like that. When we moved into our second Beaumaris house, there were signs of mice. Guinie disappeared for two days and we were afraid she must have run away, but then she reappeared nonchalantly and we never saw any sign of a mouse after that. There was a big garden and lots of lovely birds visited, which she ignored.

The next bit you're really not going to believe. It's true, though. She would sit in front of the fridge and make a miaow that sounded remarkably like the word 'milk'. Perhaps we'd said it often enough in conjunction with that stuff she liked to drink. And she was a good mimic. It might have been our imaginations – except that we all heard it the same way, and only in those circumstances. I used to say that she'd either been a person in her last incarnation or was going to be one in her next.

She outlived both Lassie and Sambo. Sambo got ill quite suddenly with a liver infection and died almost immediately, when Steve was ten, breaking his heart. Lassie eventually began dying of old age, growing weaker and weaker. She was finding her last summer very trying; Bill and the boys couldn't bear the thought of having her put to sleep, but I could see how she was suffering so I made the painful decision.

'Get a puppy,' said my friend Beth when I told her how the boys were grieving. So we found Suey, a German Shepherd cross. When she came into the house, a happy youngster, she rushed up to play with Guinivere, who scratched her deftly on the nose. Once again the pecking order was established, and they got on fine after that.

Guinivere seemed young and agile most of her life. She would run up trees to show off if we were watching, and people were amazed in her later years to know how old she was. Only towards the very end of her life she lost her sense of smell, her eyesight wasn't as good, and she slowed up. Then she started getting thin no matter what we did, and finally seemed to lose vitality suddenly one weekend. I decided to take her to the vet first thing Monday morning. That Sunday night she spent some time on my lap, then on Bill's, then on the arm of David's chair. Steve, a natural morning person, was always first up, and would let Guinivere out to relieve herself. She was waiting for him by the door that Monday and he patted her and talked to her a bit, then let her out as usual. We never saw her again. She knew our big property very well. We never could figure out where she went, but we understood that she had selected her resting place ahead of time.

When she was alive, she liked to curl up on the clothes-basket of clean washing that sat under the laundry bench until I got a chance to put it all away. Oh dear, cat hairs on the clean clothes! But I could never succeed in discouraging her, so in the end I would put an old towel on top and let her enjoy it. She would make little noises of greeting when anyone went past as she was resting there. After she died, the kids and I would still hear these little greeting noises when we walked by the clothes basket. This went on for weeks, and stopped so gradually that we didn't really notice when.

Some time after she died, I lay down for a nap one Saturday afternoon, and as soon as I closed my eyes (I was definitely not asleep) I 'saw' her come and walk on my chest and rub noses as she used to do – but one thing was different: her eyes were all red and full of pus, which they never had been. This upset me so much that I got straight up and went out to the back yard where Bill was working, telling him in tears that Guinie had come to see me but her eyes were 'all mucky'. He held me in his arms and let me cry. It was after this visitation that the hauntings stopped.

Of all cats, she was THE cat. I thought I'd never have another. But years later, after our dog Suey eventually died of cancer, some friends presented us with two kittens. They'd been to a pet shop, chosen two for themselves, couldn't bear to leave the other two and thought, 'Who else needs a pet? Of course – Bill and Rosemary.' Who can resist a kitten? I named the silent, smoky-grey little girl Ishtar. Bill named the vocal, long-legged tabby Sam.

2. Flint

When the boys grew up and started University, it wasn't that they left home – home left them. Bill and I sold up and moved from Melbourne to Three Bridges, a tiny, isolated place between Yarra Junction and Powelltown – just farms, not even any shops. By then our kittens were young cats, rather timid as unlike Guinivere they were the newest and youngest of the neighbourhood cats around our Beaumaris home. They got bullied if they ventured outside their own territory. After the move, at first they were terrified of the new surroundings but gradually they started exploring further, and soon became very confident. They had both been neutered early of course, but we used to say it was as if Sam got his balls back. We had fourteen acres, a lot of it uncleared bush. He started leaving his uncovered droppings on stones in the bush near our back gate – most un-catlike behaviour. Instead it's the behaviour of a male animal in the wild, asserting his dominance to others that might be around.

So there we were with our two cats. All our dogs had died and we had no thoughts of getting more. We were occupied getting to know our new neighbourhood and learning about country life.

I used to walk down a long lane to the road to pick up the morning paper from an old milk-can letterbox at the roadside. I started getting an image of a young dog, male, springing and running alongside me, darting into the bush to chase a rabbit for a second or two, then bounding back out and coming to me for a pat. He was brown, with big floppy ears. I had no idea where this dog in my mind had come from; he was unlike any dog I'd ever had. And I thought that if I wanted a dog, I'd prefer a female. But he kept turning up in my head every morning. I started behaving a little as if I had a real, physical dog with me. I'd pat my leg to call him to heel. One day I noticed that when I did so, the top of his back was level with my upper thigh.

I became curious. What breed could he be? I asked to be shown, and got an image of him as a young puppy with his litter mates. But I still couldn't tell. Brown. Soft wavy fur. Floppy ears. Maybe a spaniel? But no spaniel I'd ever seen was so tall.

Gigi, though she didn't live with us, had been Bill's dog. Sambo was Steve's. The rest were family dogs, belonging to all of us. I had never had a dog of my own, just mine. I had not been conscious of wanting one. But now I began to get interested in that idea. Luckily I did start mentioning my visions to a few people, otherwise I don't think anyone would have believed me later, when he turned up in the flesh.

I decided to manifest him by a certain date. I was reading Stuart Wilde's little book, Miracles, all about a technique for manifestation. I decided to try it out. The next thing that happened was that our friend 'Patricia' (not her real name) needed someone to mind her dogs for some months. A professional musician, she was doing a residency at a school. There was a house in the school grounds for her and her daughter, but definitely not for her Border Collie and her Labrador cross. So, by the date I had set for manifesting my dog, we had these two. They were mother and son. Beau, the son, appeared fully Labrador. I wondered if he was the dog I'd been seeing. Wrong colour, not quite the right height, but still.... I now think the Universe decided that as I had specified a particular date, they'd better give me something to go on with. My timing was a bit out.

Patricia's dogs were spoilt and hard to manage. And they had never been trained not to chase cats, so we had to be vigilant. They were grudgingly obedient at best. We got pretty fed up with them. Also Patricia and her daughter missed them. So one weekend when the school was empty of students and teachers, Patricia asked us over to dinner on the Friday night so that we could drop the dogs off for the two days. She would have them back to us on Sunday evening and no-one would ever be the wiser. We thought it was a very good plan!

On Saturday morning we woke and lay in bed a while, luxuriating in the absence of those damn dogs. Then we heard a bark. 'But we haven't got any dogs,' I exclaimed. It came again. We looked out the window, and saw a dog looking into our yard over the gate to the paddocks. We thought he'd wandered in from a neighbouring farm and would go back the way he came, but no, he kept giving these little barks to get attention. Eventually Bill got out and opened the gate. Then we realised how big he was. We had thought he was standing on hind legs to look over the gate, but he didn't need to, he was just resting his head on it.

Our front gate was open as we had no stock, so we figured he'd run off through there and go back where he belonged. We went back to bed and lay there talking about what kind of dog we'd like, if we were to get a new dog. The only thing we couldn't decide was the breed, so we eventually said German Shepherd in default, because we did like them. Finally I got up to make breakfast, and saw through the glass of my front door the strange dog lying across the mat, So I opened the door to send him on his way, and he stood up, sort of shy and eager at the same time. I took a look, saw how thin and dirty he was, and said, 'You've been on your own for a while, haven't you?' Well, I had dog food in the house, didn't I, for the other two. 'You'd better come in,' I said. Then, as he came hesitantly across the floor, I took another look and said, 'Oh – I know you! You've arrived.' I went and told Bill. 'Congratulations,' he said. 'You've just got yourself a dog.' He wanted to be the one to name him, and for some reason settled on Flint. He said it just came to him.

The first thing I did after feeding Flint was take him to the vet. I felt a responsibility to the other animals to make sure he was free of any contagious diseases. He had a thin, old collar on and I had a spare lead of Patricia's. He was fine in the car, and well-behaved in the waiting room, sitting quietly. The vet wanted me to leave him there for examination and collect him later. I handed the lead to the receptionist and turned to go. Suddenly there was a huge commotion, as he scrambled frantically to chase after me. Surprised and touched, I patted his head and said to him, 'It's all right. You go with the nice lady and I'll be back for you later.' He relaxed immediately and went off with her quite happily.

We had two lovely days with Flint, then Patricia brought her dogs back late on Sunday afternoon. They were furiously jealous and clearly thought we'd moved them out for the weekend in order to move this interloper in. Flint displayed great tact and intelligence by deferring to them and putting himself at the bottom of the pecking order, yet standing his ground too. He was clear he had a right to be there and he wasn't about to be forced out. He would defer only so far.

I did all the things you're meant to do about trying to trace an owner, making enquiries at all the local vets and the police station, putting up notices in shops, while inwardly praying I could keep him – and as no-one showed up to claim him, I did. Of course he turned out to have every one of the qualities Bill and I had said we wanted in a dog, as we lay there fantasising on the morning he arrived. As for the breed, we didn't have a clue. The vet said a Curly Retriever cross. That seemed right, as in Australia we are used to relatively small Curly Retrievers. We did think the cross must be with a Great Dane! He was so big that people used to say, 'That's not a dog, it's a horse.' Much later, a friend found a picture of an Irish Water Spaniel, and that looked very like him. Later still we found pictures of Curly-Coated Retrievers as big as him, and like him in every respect, even more so than the Irish Water Spaniel – though that is very similar and is thought to be an ancestor of the Curly-Coated Retriever.

Flint's eyes were a little too small for the sockets, the vet explained, and when he used to run in the bush behind our house, the tall grasses would irritate them and they would get all red and full of pus. I remembered the strange, distressing experience of dead Guinivere visiting me, her eyes just like that. It hit me that Flint was her replacement, her reincarnation. I finally made sense of that strange experience: she must have appeared to me to tell me she would come back, and to give me a sign by which to recognise her. And certainly, of all dogs, Flint was THE dog. Although I'm really a cat person, he was the only pet I ever loved as much as Guinivere. If anything, I loved him even a little more.

Patricia's term at the school came to an end and she took back her dogs, to the relief of our whole household. Flint and the cats coexisted happily. The cats used to curl up against his warm fur to sleep on cold nights. And when I went for walks in the bush, quite often all three animals would come with me. He was a friendly fellow, but a good watchdog. He had a deep, baying bark that scared strangers. He was the gentlest creature, but his size made him look fearsome, so he functioned as a good guard dog even though that probably wasn't in his nature. No-one would have been game to put it to the test.

One time I was in such a rage with Bill that I emptied a bag of rubbish all over the bonnet of his truck. I used to get a bit crazy like that in those last years with Bill. Our cat Sam jumped onto the truck and sniffed curiously at vegetable peelings. Flint immediately rushed up and barked fiercely to chase him off. I had to laugh. Clearly, if his Mum had put that rubbish there, no-one was allowed to disturb it! Restored to sanity, I calmed the dog, soothed the cat, and cleaned the truck.

After Bill and I separated four years later and I moved back to Melbourne, I had Flint with me for a time, but I couldn't supply the space and attention he needed, so I gave him to Bill, who could. Bill died suddenly of a heart attack just after Andrew and I, married a year by then, moved to northern New South Wales and signed a lease on a house. It specified no pets. Although I pleaded with the landlord, he was adamant, so I asked some friends in Melbourne to take Flint. They had a little girl he was very fond of. They looked after him very well, he was happy with them, I got to visit occasionally, and he eventually died of old age.

After he died, he used to visit me sometimes. One time a neighbour's cows got into our front yard and I couldn't get rid of them. They were Angus cattle, aggressive things. When I went to chase them out, they turned on me with heads lowered, so I retreated hastily to the safety of the verandah. When I lived in the country with Flint, the neighbour's cows would sometimes break into our front yard, and he would always chase them out. So on this occasion, on a sudden impulse, I mentally yelled for him. When I looked around, the cows were running out the gate and down the road as fast as they could, just as if something invisible was after them!

A psychic friend who had known Flint, and who had a special gift for communicating with animals, told me that Flint was 'working his way back' to me. She couldn't tell me exactly what that meant. It was good news, but I didn't let myself hope too much. I was in no position to have a big dog like that any more – or any dog for that matter, even though Andrew rather hankered for one. But we actually enjoyed our pet-free years.

3. Two cats

My cat Sam died while I was still living at Three Bridges. He had feline leukemia from a kitten, but its progress was very slow and he would go into long periods of remission. By then both Bill and I had learned Reiki. Sam and Ishtar were lap cats so they got a lot of stroking and therefore a lot of Reiki, which comes through the hands and is activated by touch. That cat had a nose for healing hands! Whenever any other healer came into the house, he would leap into their arms even if he'd never met them before. But the time came when he too disappeared, just as Guinivere had years before. I was much more aware by then. I woke one morning and just knew his energy had gone. Then I noticed that, of two cute little toy cats I had sitting in a window ledge, one had fallen face down on the floor – in a position that it was most improbable it could have fallen into naturally – though no-one had touched it. Neither had ever fallen before, in months of sitting there. I didn't want to accept it of course, but sure enough, he was nowhere to be found and never was. All the previous week we had noticed dead animals by the side of the road – road-kill. I have a theory that that's how he chose to go, and that he went a long way from home so that we would not be distressed by the sight of his body.

I felt remorseful about poor Sam. I had blatantly preferred the sweet, beautiful Ishtar. Sam was a loud, demanding cat who constantly nagged us with his shrill miaow. I loved him too, but I often got impatient and sent him outside when what he really wanted was more of my attention. I vowed to learn my lesson with future pets.

Ishtar came with me to Melbourne. I shared a house with a friend whose toddler started tormenting the cat – not meaning to, just in play, but unchecked. I couldn't have that, and I wasn't always around to prevent it, so I gave her to Bill too, and later to the family who took Flint, where she too lived happily and died old, curled up peacefully in their garden.

Sam was one of my guides. I found that out while he was still alive, when I did a course in psychic drawing. We used to meditate and then draw. I used chalk pastels. Convinced I couldn't draw, I would let myself be guided as to what colours to pick up and where they were to go on the paper. On this day our meditation was to connect with our guides. Afterwards I produced a very stylized cat, unrealistic but recognisable. From the particular configuration of stripes on the face, I knew it was Sam. I asked The Guys Upstairs why a guide would come in that form, and was told, in a tone of mild surprise as if stating the obvious, 'Because you like cats.'

When I learned Reiki II, with a technique for communicating with the inner being of the client, I discovered that Flint too was a guide for me – which was no surprise. In fact he turned out to be mostly Higher Self with just a thin veneer of dogginess. That, of course, was when he was still alive and we were still together.

In 1998 Andrew and I moved to North Tumbulgum. Soon afterwards we inherited two young cats from a friend who couldn't keep them: Levi and Freya. Levi is like a big black panther; Freya is more puma. The vets call her tortoiseshell but she's mostly grey. I realised I'd been catless too long!

Now I teach Reiki, and in a Level II class I try to have students work with a variety of clients, not only people but also plants and animals. I use the opportunity to do healings myself, along with the students. In one class, I chose Levi to work on. Imagine my astonishment when his inner self said clearly, 'You liked me better when I was a dog.' I did a huge double-take, knowing instantly there was only one dog he could mean. Yes, it's the same being, with me again. He has exactly Flint's personality, translated into catness. Every now and then I think this couldn't possibly be so, it's my fevered imagination – and then his eyes will suddenly get pus in them (which they normally don't) or he will sit with his chest erect and front legs crossed just as Flint used to do (which again he doesn't usually) – as if to show me that, yes, it really is him.

In that same Reiki II class, I had one of my assistants – an old friend who had known all my animals – work on Freya. Not knowing at that stage what I had been getting about Levi, she was informed that Freya was a reincarnation of my cat Sam. Again it made perfect sense. Freya looks very like Ishtar, and of course is female too, but she has Sam's demanding personality and his strident miaow! I figure she came back in a form she thought I'd prefer. I make sure I give her lots of love and attention this time around.

As we can't have dogs where we are now, but cats are allowed, it makes sense that Flint became a cat once more. In his dog life, Flint loved me best of anyone, but he liked men and used to follow Bill all over the place. Levi follows Andrew around like a dog, and comes when whistled. He flexes his paws in the way Flint used to, and unlike other cats he won't retract his claws no matter how much I try to teach him. Flint was much too big to be allowed on the bed, though he craved it and occasionally sneaked on when no-one was around, looking very sheepish when discovered. Levi loves to lie on the bed, but is always a bit hesitant, never taking it for granted – unlike Freya, who has been my cat in both lifetimes and thinks it's her right to get on the bed.

They are good cats and we're a happy family. But Levi was right – I did like him better as a dog.

Animal Ghosts

[Republished from one of my MySpace blogs]

There are people who swear that animals don't have souls. How bleak an afterlife that would be, with no animals! The idea is nonsense, I know. Sometimes they return as ghosts; sometimes they reincarnate. I have personal experience of both.

My cat Sam, when alive, used to love to jump up on to the bed next to me with a resounding thud. After he died, I would sometimes be sitting on the bed, and there would be a sudden thud beside me. Or when I was outside I would catch a glimpse of his silhouette looking down from the edge of the roof, another of his favourite activities. In life, of course, he was clearly visible when he was there. In death, he would show himself only long enough that I knew it wasn't a mere trick of the eye or a moment of wishful thinking, and then he would vanish. I felt he was playing a cheeky game with me.

For some years I attended a meditation group in which the host's cat, Specks, liked to participate. Jim would spread a towel across his lap to stop her ecstatically flexing claws from digging into him, and she would lie there quietly for the whole meditation. Specks grew old and eventually died. One night as I came out of meditation, just as I opened my eyes I saw Specks sitting on the low coffee table. I was startled fully awake, and she was gone. Jim said others had seen her too. 'She tends to look bigger and paler than she was in life,' he said, and I nodded. That was exactly how I had seen her. But why was she on the table? He grinned. 'She wasn't allowed on it when she was alive.'

My Scotch Collie, Lassie (unoriginally named by her previous owner) was a motherly soul although she never had puppies. She mothered her human family instead. When my sons were little, if I scolded them severely she would place herself between them and me and growl at me softly. Lassie adored me and would never have hurt me, but it was her way of telling me I was overdoing it. As far as she was concerned, they were her kids too! She was similarly protective of their father and me if she thought we needed it. She had been dead a long time – years – when I was working late in my study one night, pushing myself even though I was tired, a bad habit I had got into. Something made me turn around and look behind me. I saw Lassie in the doorway, perfectly clearly – but I saw her in that classic way ghosts are described: I could see through her. It was very strange; I could both see her in every detail, and see the room and its contents through her, at the same time. She was coming in the door, head forward, looking purposeful, and I realised she was telling me it was high time to go to bed. This was not a matter of moments; I stared at her for some time, amazed but not at all scared. After all, this was my dear Lassie! As soon as I got over my surprise and understood her message, she quietly disappeared.

A later dog, Suey, a German Shepherd, never showed herself to me after she died, but I would hear her. I worked from home when we had Suey, and she had the habit of following me about the house during the day, when there were just the two of us there. I wasn't always prompt to trim her claws, and as she followed me they would scrape audibly on the wooden floors. After her death, for months she would still follow me around, as I knew by the comforting scrape of her claws behind me. Eventually it happened less and less. I didn't really notice when it stopped altogether.

This was the way of it with most of my friendly animal ghosts. Not all of my pets did return to haunt, and Lassie only came that one time long after her death, but mostly they would be very present for a few weeks or months, then less and less so and then not at all, like a gradual fading. I suppose they stayed attached for a while and then moved on. Usually my children perceived them too, in exactly the same ways I did, over the same length of time. Sadly for him, their father never did. He didn't exactly disbelieve, but for much of his life anything intangible was an unknown world. I think he sometimes felt we were having illusions, our subconscious minds arranging to comfort us for the deaths of these beloved pets.

Indeed, might it not have been so? It seems all too feasible — were it not for my experiences at second hand. I work as a psychic reader, and sometimes this takes the form of mediumship. I use a big crystal ball. I am more clairsentient than anything else, so instead of scrying, I place one hand on the crystal and with the other I hold my client's hand. I shut my eyes, and then I see images behind my closed lids and hear messages in my head. Anything and everything can come through when I do this; I am just a channel for whatever the Powers That Be choose to present to help the client. Sometimes a guide will arrive to give a message. Sometimes dead relatives or friends will come. Often the client will ask to be put in touch with specific people who have passed on; sometimes they turn up unasked. These are experiences of great love, which, being clairsentient, I feel in my own body. I am often moved to tears — never by grief, but by the depths of the loving.

I always describe to the client what I am getting. I don't know these people! I have to double check. The client will confirm, 'Oh yes, that's my grandmother,' or perhaps will say, 'Oh no, that sounds more like my aunty'. It delights me when, occasionally, a deceased pet comes through. It makes the clients very happy too. I've encountered both dogs and cats, and once a horse. These animals appear healthy and happy. They are always glad to be communicating with their human friends, but not grieving in the slightest. They have absolute trust that they will be reunited in the spirit world; it's not in question, and there is no impatience.

I suspect they have ready access to this world anyway, even after they have fully passed on into spirit. They don't give the impression that these assisted meetings are rare reunions; they don't seem to have been fretting for the person. Animals when living are so psychic, they can be aware of things a great distance away. Why should it not be so after death? This I don't know for sure; I speculate on the basis of my observations. I have no doubt, however, that animals do have individual souls.

Some people firmly believe there are only collective animal souls, one for each species. Some of the people who think this base it on their own psychic experiences. I think they have encountered archetypes. There are nature spirits associated with the various life forms. There are individual spirits for the individual manifestations of any form — a single plant, a specific animal — and there is also the archetypal spirit of 'dog' or 'wolf' or 'wattle tree' or whatever.

But that's another story….