I’m celebrating my beautiful cat who turned 15 years old today! Callie came into our lives when my kids were 1 and 4 years old. She was born at our local animal shelter - her mom had been brought in as a stray right before giving birth. The mom was a sweet calico cat, and Callie was the only kitten in her litter that looked just like her mom, which is how my husband and 4 year old daughter decided she was the one for our family. They were hoping/assuming the “like mother, like daughter” mantra applied to felines as well as humans.
In a funny twist of fate (that involved some fretful calls when I realized many weeks later that the Mom cat was still at the shelter and had never been adopted though all her kittens had), Pixie, Callie's mom, was adopted by my husbands brother and ended up living a great life not far from her lookalike daughter.
Over these 15 years, Callie has been a wonderful companion for my kids, especially my daughter, who just finished her second year of college. Callie & Sadie were fairly inseparable and then when Sadie left home for school, Callie decided I would make a good fill in as a bedmate.
A few years ago when I attended my first animal communication workshop with Danielle MacKinnon at Omega Institute (in Rhinebeck, NY), those of us participating in the workshop practiced our skills by reading each others animals. Callie was the first animal I ever had anyone communicate with. I remember being blown away by the woman I was paired with for the reading. The information she gave me on her personality was so specific to Callie and all rang so true. I cried. And immediately I asked the question that so many people want to ask** when they have their own animals read: “Does she know how much I love her?” The reason I wanted to know? While I always took care of her well-being and made sure she was fed, clean and cared for, I wasn’t always so kind in the way I spoke to her. Mostly in a joking way, but still. I worried, once I realized just how much our animals understand, that she might not have realized that I was joking or teasing her. I very much wanted her to know that I did indeed love her more than I ever had communicated to her. And I wanted her to know that I didn’t really mean it when I called her a bitch (most of the time anyway), though I was too embarrassed to even admit that I ever referred to her that way during that reading. I can’t remember exactly what the woman said to me in response, but I remember it being an acknowledgement of knowing that she was loved. And then she said that Callie claimed that she is in charge of all the animals in the house. That was true as well — at the time, I had three dogs (a german shepherd and two cavaliers) and a male maine coon cat. The woman then said “she is actually claiming that she likes to think of herself as the “queen bitch of the house”. I couldn’t have said it better.
Since that first reading, my energy toward Callie changed and as a result our relationship and her energy and demeanor changed as well. I’ve had her read probably a dozen or so additional times when practicing with other animal communicators, and I’m always amazed that the information they receive and the messages she gives are always the same. Callie has helped me work on several soul lessons, and I am hoping she will continue helping me grow and evolve for at least a few more years. Happy Birthday, Callie!
**When I am doing a reading for a client, especially for a shorter session and let the person know that they will probably have time for one question, I caution them not to ask the “does he/she know how much I love him/her?”, as the answer is always a resounding yes. Given a little time to think of a question, you can usually come up with something you really want to know even more than that (especially once you know the answer is yes).