In my article called “Sometimes They Come Back,” I wrote an account of my old cat Lucy being reborn as my current cat, Emily. In my next blog entry, I am going to relate, to the best of my understanding, how you can encourage having your animal’s spirit return to you in a new animal body. First, I wanted to talk a little about what the experience is like.
So, your beloved animal of almost two decades crosses over and it’s like losing a member of the family. You hear this notion that your animal can come back in a new animal body and be with you again and you find you’re all for that. You’re ready for her return ASAP.
What you want, or rather I should say what I wanted was for my old cat to come walking through the door with a new, young, healthy body so that we could pickup where we left off. We’d do all the same things, play the same games, snuggle in all the old places and times that we used to.
In reality, that’s not the way it works. First, your new animal is unlikely to resemble your old one. He or she might not be the old gender or even be the same species. Your old dog might show up as a stray cat that decides to adopt you. Your former horse might in fact return as a new dog.
Let’s assume for a moment that your old dog or cat comes back as a new dog or cat; even if it’s the same breed, he or she is unlikely to look exactly like they used to. They might want to look a little differently. At any rate, chances are probable that they’ll be rolling in in at least a slightly new form.
Then, the new animal is unlikely to do all the same things the former animal did. I have to wonder exactly how much they remember about their old lifetime. If I had to guess, I’d say it varies in the same way the memory of a human’s past lives vary from person to person. If you read “Sometimes They Come Back,” you’ll see that Emily seems to have many of the old behaviors that Lucy did. But these weren’t discovered right away. These were things I observed over time.
Here’s one observation I didn’t mention in the first article: My wife and I adopted Lucy shortly after we got married, just after we moved into our new house. At the time, Lucy used to like to sit in this one spot at the top of the stairs, just outside my office door. From this vantage, Lucy could see me working at my desk and could look down the stairs to where my wife would putter around.
As the years went by, I spent less time upstairs, doing a lot more work with my laptop in the living room. Lucy gradually stopped sleeping in that spot. Yet now Emily sleeps in that same upstairs spot for no obvious reason. I will discover her sleeping there at night when I go to bed (my bedroom is downstairs) and find her there in the morning. It’s a cold, uncomfortable spot. There’s no heater vent that might attract her to be there, and since Lucy slept there, the carpeting has changed, so it’s unlikely that any trace of Lucy’s old scent remains there. Yet still, there Emily sleeps.
It’s clear that Emily remembers something of her old lifetime. Lucy had been a sleepy old cat when she departed and returned as a hyperactive little kitten (the same hyperactive kitten that Lucy had been all those years ago). Yet Emily and I don’t do the same things that we did now that she’s returned, either because Emily doesn’t remember doing those things or because maybe she considers those “old cat things” and she is happy enough to run around in her new cat body.
Was I disappointed that my old cat Lucy didn’t come sauntering in the door exactly the way she had been? I was, at least at first. Do I think of Emily as Lucy in a new set of “clothes”? I don’t. That wouldn’t be fair to Lucy or to Emily. This is a new relationship and it requires getting to know her new quirks, even if many of the old ones are still there, just the way they’ve always been.
Emily is much improved from Lucy. Lucy was a worrier. If something loud was going on outside, Lucy would look worried. If Lucy would see the bottom of her food dish, she would look worried. And while Emily definitely has those same kinds of moments, she seems much more mellow than Lucy had been.
I do miss Lucy still, but the tear in my heart that opened up when she left is no longer there. The essence of who Lucy was is here with me now. But Emily is Emily and I love her in a new and unique way.
Have an animal who you think has come back to you in a new animal body? Please write to me and tell me your story.
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