The Toronto Star Asked Me What Their Pets Were Really Thinking

When The Kit's Leanne Delap reached out during the first lockdown, she asked me the question I hear more than almost any other: what is my animal actually thinking? Her home was a blended one, an anxious rescue cockapoo, a tabby, two ragdoll cats, all suddenly surrounded by humans who never left. And the animals had noticed. They always notice. Let me tell you something I have learned in over thirty years of doing this work: our animals are finely tuned instruments, and they feel every shift in the emotional weather of a home long before we say a word about it.

So I tuned in. One of her cats wanted more space and was getting clingy because she was not getting it. The dog was not misbehaving, she was trying to herd her people to safety, because that is love in a dog's language. I could tell Leanne about pets living and passed, because on my end of the line, they are all still reachable. Death for an animal is not an ending, it is a change of clothes, a shift of frequency, and the ones who have crossed the rainbow bridge still come and sit with the people they adored.

That is the heart of animal communication. It is not a parlor trick. It is translation, done with respect, so that the beings who cannot use our words finally get to be understood.