Chiquita the Buddhess

Chiquita, our space cat, passed away naturally on Saturday, August 25th, just shy of her 18th birthday from renal disease. She was always the sweetest cat that anyone had ever met and she touched many, many lives.

Chiquita was abandoned by her owners who moved and left her behind in December 1999 along with 2 other cats (Boba Fett, Amidala), whom we still have, and two rabbits (oh fateful day!) whom of course were our first rabbits (Jar Jar, Darth), and two parakeets (Luna, Skywalker), whom we also took in. We would have taken the iguana they left as well but he did not survive the abandonment.

Before we knew Chiquita’s name, we always called her ‘the Lolly cat’ because she had the same markings as our white collie, Lolly. We would often see Chiquita sitting on top of the roof of her house where she loved to sun herself. She was well known in that neighborhood and fed by all the residents as her owners never cared for her or fed her. She was the cat who made you love cats and her beauty was unparalleled, it was breathtaking and stunning, from the bottom of her black-padded feet to the tip of her Norwegian Forest cat ears.

In 2003, Chiquita had a dental cleaning and stopped eating for nearly six weeks. She developed fatty liver disease and had to have a feeding tube installed in her neck and I fed her tiny amounts of food every hour on the hour for 10 hours a day for two months. All the vets had given up on her. My stubbbornness finally had value and she began eating again well after the window that the literature previously observed recovery, two months later.

She pulled the feeding tube out herself and started eating dry food (of all things!). We had some extraordinary experiences during that time. I remember losing hope myself and asking, “Chiqui, why won’t you eat!!!?” She showed me that she had an orange squid in her stomach. Then I went to check on her and she had pulled the feeding tube out of her neck and thrown it on the floor. It was orange. Another time, when the tube was still in, I fed her a little bit too much and she threw up. She kept throwing up and finally I asked, “Chiqui are you done?” The feeding tube acted like a microphone for deep down in her throat and she spoke out loud in English, “I don’t know” in a halting manner.

But although her liver fully recovered, her kidneys had been irreparably damaged and we began a long journey into becoming fluid in sodium chloride.

Her kidneys were treated with herbs from the wonderful herbalist Debbie Hoyt and “Chiqui” nearly sprang back 100% again. Four years of fluids though, will wear you down. Debbie helped her beat a urinary tract infection which Chiqui had been plagued with for nearly her entire life.

Before she became our cat, she became known throughout her neighborhood as the cat who wouldn’t kill. Unlike all the other outdoor cats, Chiqui wouldn’t kill baby birds or mice or any living thing. And so it was that she was our ‘upstairs’ cat who could be trusted to snuggle up next to the macaw or the tiny parrotlets without a single devious thought crossing her mind. She was the epitome of benevolence, the most spiritually wise and wonderful cat imaginable. She was our space cat, our astral-projecting feline tip toeing on a bridge of light between the dimensions, one foot in this world and one foot in the netherworld, all the time. You could see it in her eyes.

We would often say to her, “Put in a good word for us Chiquita.”

Chiquita has served as one of the animal shamans for my animal communication practice now for the last five years. She will continue to do so although she is in Spirit. In fact, she has always been in Spirit, it was just her body that tethered her soul here for a little while so I could drink up her majesty and wisdom. She was my snow leopard, my Buddhess, my Tibetan princess.

Our lives will never be the same. An era has ended. Namaste Chiquita. See you at the big party at the Rainbow Bridge.

I’ll be seeing you.

More on Wolves Who Speak Chinese

So yesterday I told you about Mac, who spoke Chinese and English as a pup and Nicki, my childhood poodle, who spoke Chinese, and Rocky, my current GSD who speaks only English as far as I know.

In addition to these Chinese connections, I have had a number of clients' dogs talk about China to me as well, telepathically, that is. When I talk to clients' animals, it is very different than what I was talking about in yesterday's post. This is done telepathically, often over great distances. I work from photographs and the it's the eyes in the photo that make the connection. The eyes are the window to the soul and immediately when a client emails me their animal's photo and I look at the eyes, the connection is there.

WORTH A THOUSAND WOOFS
Many animal communicators do not require a photo and it is not really necessary at all to establish a connection. Just talking with the client is a connection often sufficient for expanding that connection to their pet. But I prefer to work from photos because I am a bit lazy and because I am inundated with messages from animals all day long as it is and need to have a 'key' to identify exactly what is coming from where. Not many animal communicators deal with as many animals in a single day as I do and so this just helps me out.

When clients fill our the form with questions they would like to ask their animals, one of the most common question is 'have we been together before?' meaning in another life. This question is always tricky because often the client may not be ready for the response! Why might that be? And sometimes, the animal will volunteer this information without the client having asked for it.

One particular client comes to mind. A sweet lady whose golden retriever needed to exit this plane of existence at the end of a long, happy life. The question was when. Another common question is always, 'is there anything the pet wants to tell me?' Well in this case, what the golden retriever wanted to say was what he showed me, himself as a Chinese rice farmer thousands of years ago happily talking with another rice farmer (the client). After a number of dogs had showed me themselves as having been Chinese dogs or people, I started wondering what is all this about dogs and China. And then I saw that show I mentioned yesterday called The History of Dogs which explained how dogs first evolved from wolves in China.

SOUL LINKING THROUGH VARIOUS FORMS
So that explained all the dogs telling me they were from China. But how long ago was this? And if they were rice farmers back then (when?), why were they dogs now? Some of them said they were travelling in soul groups and that our human ancestors will sometimes purposely reincarnate as a pet of their progeny to help guide and protect them. These souls groups, or families, really, seem to be held together by the fact that we are our ancestors and in some cases, we are the shattered glass shards of our ancestors. That is to say, as the Tibetan Buddhists believe, one soul can split into three upon reincarnation, those three parts being body, speech and mind. So if you start with a distant ancestor who splits into three and then later on down the road, one of those three splits into three, etc., you end up with a soul group.

And sometimes the soul groups can only stay together in roundabout kind of ways. Short-lived encounters like having a beloved pet that only is with us for 10 or so years is still an effective way to keep a soul group together and our dog friends often have herding instincts that make them want to do this.

MY DOG, MYSELF
So some of our dogs could be our great grandfathers and mothers. And cats too. And some of our cats our are previous dogs. For instance, the little Chinese-speaking brown poodle I spoke of yesterday, Nicki, is now my orange tabby cat, Rusty. But I will talk about my experience with learning this another time. For today, I am just focusing on dogs who we have been with before, in previous lives when they were people and we were people and previous lives when they were dogs and so were we.

And tomorrow I will talk about my great red dog, Wolfgang, and the lives we shared before and the original soul ancestor we shared whom we both encountered together during a daylight, mystical moment that bridged tens of thousands of years. What a day that was! One I shall never forget and a pair of eyes whose soul staring back at me was the original source of my own.