Skip to main content

What is That Black Cat with Wings?

I am currently enrolled in a 16 hour Hospice volunteer training program with the intent to serve as a Reiki and pet therapy volunteer. The first six hours of training consisted of five units covering the dying process, volunteer parameters, caregiver roles, special populations, and legal and organizational procedures. In a session often punctuated by our own personal, sometimes emotional disclosures, Ann, the Volunteer Director, softened the clinical descriptions of "the death journey" with poignant patient anecdotes from her own experience and Hospice literature, revisiting the phenomenon of fading earthly consciousness teetering between worlds as we prepare to die. Patients, open eyed but not fully present, often enter audible conversation with loved ones who passed on before them. Debbie, my friend of 40 years, described her fascination watching her father just before he died; he stared into space and engaged in animated dialogue with his mother, who had died fifty years prior. Our seminar director shared many such stories, all of which validate Dr. Raymond Moody's findings in Life After Life: significant people from our past who made the journey before us retrieve us from the earthly plane at the end of this life. I know from my own meditations and readings that our animal companions return to escort us to the Light. But in this venue I was hardly prepared for her most astounding and exciting revelation: many Hospice patients, rapidly approaching their last breath, ask the same question:

"What was that black cat with wings I just saw pass by the room?"

A spirit cat as an agent of Light, delivering the "all aboard!" message to those about to enter the tunnel . Whether it's the collective unconscious perceiving a single Jungian symbol of death or an actual summoning by a feline angel doesn't matter. It validates our connection to animals on a soul level and makes real a theory of divine exchange: we are their guardians in this life; they becomes ours in the next. What greater love can there be?



About sixteen years ago, in a past life regeression, I was asked to let my consciousness drift to the end of a former life and allow my release into the void. I remember the darkness, the nothing; I had no fear or expectation but felt as if I were waiting, and when the therapist asked me who was coming for me, images of animals, one after the other, began to emerge, soft, blurry edged images of animals leading me from darkness. I know this expectation is held by many indigenous peoples.


For me , the notion of a winged cat passing my doorway to signal my imminent passage offers overwhelming comfort, reassurance that the Spirit never leaves us alone and fearful, a fulfillment of traditional tribal promises as well as God's repeated promise to us in Biblical contexts: "Fear not, for I am with you." What greater love can there be?



For an interesting real-time manifestation of this spiritual phenomenon, read the story of a Boston Hospice cat who accurately predicts the deaths of patients:


http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2007/07/26/with_a_purr_death_comes_on_little_cat_feet/



You can also read some interesting documented information about earthly cats with "wings."

http://www.messybeast.com/winged-cats.htm
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God’s Covenant With Animals: Stewardship, Not Rule

What is our human responsibility to the earth and its non-human inhabitants?  Traditional Biblical scholars would say one of master-servant and ecologists would say one of caretaker.  However, using either frame, neither movement has responded in full view of the evidence presented throughout the Bible that God clearly included animals in covenantal relationships. With Biblical scholars neglecting  the sanctity of animals and secular environmentalists neglecting God.  A closer look at the Old Testament reveals that God designed humankind’s role in relation to the animals as one of stewardship rather than domination .  Traditionally religious people often cite  Scripure justify  a master/servant relationship between humans and animals  rather than one of partnership, but  deeper investigation invites us to see texts rich with references, both literal and figurative, to the partnership between humankind and the animal world.  From Gen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Living with an Old Dog: Every Moment a Blessing

This morning I thought my old girl, Ingrid, had died, and I was stunned as I tried to lift her head and leg and they just fell, heavy, onto the bed. I didn't even see her breathing. It felt as if there was no life in her body at all. I surrounded her with my body, thinking she was gone, calling her name.....and then she moved. :-'(. I thought, "this is the way I want you to leave," peacefully, without drama. Maybe she was practicing. I cried much of the morning. But she's still here....a blessing. She turned 14 last week and quietly enjoyed a small birthday party attended by her two housemate dogs and three other dog friends.  She was subdued but enjoyed enough birthday treats to the point of vomiting them up onto the couch at midnight.   She can no longer climb into the bed and anxiously paced back and forth along the foot board until I lifted all 50 pounds of her and she curled up and slept till morning.  On occasion I would awaken in the middle of the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ingrid 6/24/2003 - 4/18/2018

Ingrid was the boss of the house, the boss of the toys, the boss of the boys, but never, ever, the boss of me. She was my princess and in her last year, everything she requested was hers without question. If I was busy on the computer and she wanted to push her head under my elbow to demand some petting, I stopped typing. When we came in from outside at night, she sat facing the fridge, looking at the top of it like a star gazer, waiting for me to take down the jar of treats and reward her for nothing more than coming back into the house. I dread taking my shower this morning, because she was the bathroom girl and i always wobbled getting out of the shower in an effort to avoid stepping on her. But the bed -- that was the throne from which she ruled. I bought her a leather ottoman last year to help her climb into it which she did immediately without any prompting or instruction. She slept on the lower right quadrant of the queen size bed but sometimes inched her way up next to me which...
Post a Comment
Read more