I have 22 dogs in my house, all of whom have been rescued. But deep down inside, I am really a cat person. I would be happy if I could keep 22 or more cats as well. In the movie Pretty Woman, the last lines stick in my mind. Richard Gere says to Julia Roberts “What happens after the knight rescues the lady?” and she answers, “She rescues him right back.’ Cats are like that. They refuse to be passively thankful. They spend their time being independent with so much attitude that you have no idea who “owns” whom!
I have just finished reading Richard Webster’s “Is your Pet Psychic?” a collection of anecdotes. The chapter on cats describes their senses and agility. Did you know that the field of vision of each eye slightly overlaps the other, like binoculars, allowing them to hone in with incredible accuracy on their prey. That their hair also acts as a sensory organ, that their ears can move 180degrees to focus on the direction of the sound without turning their heads and they contain semicircular canals that provide them with an unerring sense of balance.
But the book is not about physical attributes but about the sixth sense of animals. The Egyptians who revered the cat called it Mau. This is not based on Meow but means “seer”- one with the ability to see what we cannot , including the future. There are hundreds of recorded instances where cats have raced out of houses frantically, hours, even days, before an earthquake . One second World War incident related by the Vicar of St Augustine’s Church in London is about his cat Faith and her kitten. They disappeared and was found in a small niche, three floors below ground level. Four times the Vicar carried them back to his room. They went back. Three days later, the place was bombed and burned to the ground. The cat and her kitten kept mewing till they were found safely tucked into the niche.Every family from that time has a story about cats who ran to bomb shelters long before the planes arrived. Hundreds of people who simply followed them were saved.
The author has his own story: every year their parents rented a vacation home from a woman who would leave her cat with them for three weeks. Every year the cat disappeared as soon as the owner left and did not reappear till one hour before the woman was to return !In another instance, their cat Ting who had never been interested in the phone until the author’s sister, her carer, went to hospital. Whenever she would call from the hospital, the family knew it was her because , even before the phone rang , Ting had already reached the instrument. Leading in the research into the unexplained powers of animals including cats is the scientist Dr Rupert Sheldrake. One special power is their ability to know when their owners are calling on the phone before anyone has picked it up. "We found several times where cats anticipate telephone calls from their owners. They get excited if the phone rings and their owner is on the phone, but they ignore phone calls from anyone else, and this happens when their owners call from a great distance or at unpredictable times."
Like dogs cats miraculously appear at the gate or doorstep the moment you arrive home from work, no matter what time it is and which car you arrive in.
Repeated experiments were tried with a cat whose favourite food was cheese and who knew if cheese was in the fridge even if many other strong smelling food were put there. Her owner only need to think about cheese and he would jump up onto her lap. Instead of calling him she just thought about a great big piece of cheese and the cat would arrive.
Dr. Sheldrake's theory on how animals have these powers is Morphic Fields. "Morphic fields are involved in self-organizing systems which include cells, animals, and groups of organisms. When the owner and the pet form a bond there is a field that connects them," said Dr. Sheldrake. He says the fact that we see schools of fish or flocks of birds turning in the same direction simultaneously is evidence of these morphic fields. Dr. Sheldrake believes these fields connect living things, whether of the same species or different species, which have close connections to one another across distances, whether large or small.
Jim Berkland is a geologist who has been working for the last 30 years in California predicting earthquakes. His work is chronicled in the book, The Man Who Predicts Earthquakes, by Cal Orey. One method he uses is observing the behavior of cats and dogs. Specifically, the number of lost cats listed in local newspapers. For thousands of years, people in China had been successfully predicting earthquakes based on the behavior of animals before quakes. Jim's first prediction involving cats occurred in 1980. "On Nov 7th in 1980 there were 14 missing cat ads, the most of the whole year. There are usually 3 or 4 missing cat ads". Based on that and other factors, Jim predicted a 7.4 earthquake in the next few days. Within days there was a 7.4 Earthquake in Eureka , California . Since then Berkland has successfully predicted over 25 earthquakes based on missing cat and dog ads. His most famous prediction came in 1989 when he predicted the famous "World Series" earthquake in San Francisco . Missing cat ads were a record 27. On October 17th, four days after he called the papers with his prediction, the most deadly earthquake since 1906 hit the San Francisco area. How are cats able to detect these earthquakes? Animals can detect the change in the earth's magnetic field. When they sense this and realize something will happen many cats and dogs flee.
Jeane Dixon, America’s most famous astrologer wrote a book called Do Cats have ESP , in 1998. She has described the findings of scientists at the parapsychology laboratory in Duke University which have repeatedly confirmed that cats have psychic abilities.
In the Middle Ages, the prescience of the cat was so widely recognised that people began to believe that they were witches. In 1484 Pope Innocent VII ordered millions of cats to be tortured and killed. On the other side of the world, Chinese Emperor Khai –hwang ordered anyone involved with cats to be banished to the ends of his empire. The leftovers of that is that superstition of black cats crossing your path – we still believe that the black cat knows what is going to befall you that day and is warning you !
What has saved cats has been their mortal enemies, rats. As the rats spread, cats and their practical witchcraft was needed again and they were brought back into society as working animals and from there they magicked their way back into people’s hearts and laps!
Maneka Gandhi
To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
I have just finished reading Richard Webster’s “Is your Pet Psychic?” a collection of anecdotes. The chapter on cats describes their senses and agility. Did you know that the field of vision of each eye slightly overlaps the other, like binoculars, allowing them to hone in with incredible accuracy on their prey. That their hair also acts as a sensory organ, that their ears can move 180degrees to focus on the direction of the sound without turning their heads and they contain semicircular canals that provide them with an unerring sense of balance.
But the book is not about physical attributes but about the sixth sense of animals. The Egyptians who revered the cat called it Mau. This is not based on Meow but means “seer”- one with the ability to see what we cannot , including the future. There are hundreds of recorded instances where cats have raced out of houses frantically, hours, even days, before an earthquake . One second World War incident related by the Vicar of St Augustine’s Church in London is about his cat Faith and her kitten. They disappeared and was found in a small niche, three floors below ground level. Four times the Vicar carried them back to his room. They went back. Three days later, the place was bombed and burned to the ground. The cat and her kitten kept mewing till they were found safely tucked into the niche.Every family from that time has a story about cats who ran to bomb shelters long before the planes arrived. Hundreds of people who simply followed them were saved.
The author has his own story: every year their parents rented a vacation home from a woman who would leave her cat with them for three weeks. Every year the cat disappeared as soon as the owner left and did not reappear till one hour before the woman was to return !In another instance, their cat Ting who had never been interested in the phone until the author’s sister, her carer, went to hospital. Whenever she would call from the hospital, the family knew it was her because , even before the phone rang , Ting had already reached the instrument. Leading in the research into the unexplained powers of animals including cats is the scientist Dr Rupert Sheldrake. One special power is their ability to know when their owners are calling on the phone before anyone has picked it up. "We found several times where cats anticipate telephone calls from their owners. They get excited if the phone rings and their owner is on the phone, but they ignore phone calls from anyone else, and this happens when their owners call from a great distance or at unpredictable times."
Like dogs cats miraculously appear at the gate or doorstep the moment you arrive home from work, no matter what time it is and which car you arrive in.
Repeated experiments were tried with a cat whose favourite food was cheese and who knew if cheese was in the fridge even if many other strong smelling food were put there. Her owner only need to think about cheese and he would jump up onto her lap. Instead of calling him she just thought about a great big piece of cheese and the cat would arrive.
Dr. Sheldrake's theory on how animals have these powers is Morphic Fields. "Morphic fields are involved in self-organizing systems which include cells, animals, and groups of organisms. When the owner and the pet form a bond there is a field that connects them," said Dr. Sheldrake. He says the fact that we see schools of fish or flocks of birds turning in the same direction simultaneously is evidence of these morphic fields. Dr. Sheldrake believes these fields connect living things, whether of the same species or different species, which have close connections to one another across distances, whether large or small.
Jim Berkland is a geologist who has been working for the last 30 years in California predicting earthquakes. His work is chronicled in the book, The Man Who Predicts Earthquakes, by Cal Orey. One method he uses is observing the behavior of cats and dogs. Specifically, the number of lost cats listed in local newspapers. For thousands of years, people in China had been successfully predicting earthquakes based on the behavior of animals before quakes. Jim's first prediction involving cats occurred in 1980. "On Nov 7th in 1980 there were 14 missing cat ads, the most of the whole year. There are usually 3 or 4 missing cat ads". Based on that and other factors, Jim predicted a 7.4 earthquake in the next few days. Within days there was a 7.4 Earthquake in Eureka , California . Since then Berkland has successfully predicted over 25 earthquakes based on missing cat and dog ads. His most famous prediction came in 1989 when he predicted the famous "World Series" earthquake in San Francisco . Missing cat ads were a record 27. On October 17th, four days after he called the papers with his prediction, the most deadly earthquake since 1906 hit the San Francisco area. How are cats able to detect these earthquakes? Animals can detect the change in the earth's magnetic field. When they sense this and realize something will happen many cats and dogs flee.
Jeane Dixon, America’s most famous astrologer wrote a book called Do Cats have ESP , in 1998. She has described the findings of scientists at the parapsychology laboratory in Duke University which have repeatedly confirmed that cats have psychic abilities.
In the Middle Ages, the prescience of the cat was so widely recognised that people began to believe that they were witches. In 1484 Pope Innocent VII ordered millions of cats to be tortured and killed. On the other side of the world, Chinese Emperor Khai –hwang ordered anyone involved with cats to be banished to the ends of his empire. The leftovers of that is that superstition of black cats crossing your path – we still believe that the black cat knows what is going to befall you that day and is warning you !
What has saved cats has been their mortal enemies, rats. As the rats spread, cats and their practical witchcraft was needed again and they were brought back into society as working animals and from there they magicked their way back into people’s hearts and laps!
Maneka Gandhi
To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.