An excerpt from Animal Healing by Niki J. Senior
“What on earth are you doing with that cat?” A sentence I heard almost every day as a child from my parents. I was sharing something so natural and pure; healing, compassion and love. I owe so much to Timmy, as he was the furred soul who helped me realise my healing potential some forty years ago. As I look back, the fact is that I owe my whole life to ‘that cat’ which I shall explain later.
I was five or six when Dad bought home the scrawny black semi-feral cat to keep me company. My parents thought I needed a companion, I did. I was a solitary and quite lonely child. My Father worked at a Sheffield steel works, building casts, and his work colleague had taken on the task of feeding all the foundry cats. All these cats were strays which had been cast aside by uncaring owners into the harsh, industrial steel city, and through lack of human compassion, love and adequate care, they had become semi-feral.
Timmy’s Tumour
A little black cat made quite an impression on my Dad. He tried to coax the tiny furred bundle to eat, but his appetite was poor. However, after a few weeks of building up trust, Dad managed to trap ‘Timmy’ and bring the skinny kitty home.
As soon as Dad lifted up the cat carrier basket, Timmy meowed at me in an odd way and I guessed it was his ‘special’ greeting. I was immediately smitten and overjoyed to have a soul companion to share those special moments and secrets with, and we bonded straight away. However, after about a week we had to take Timmy to see the vet. His appetite had decreased, despite all our best efforts to persuade him to eat, and Timmy was drastically losing weight. He was admitted to the clinic and after numerous tests over the following days Timmy was diagnosed with a renal tumour. The vet showed Dad and me the X-ray as he explained the tumour was the size of a small orange. Timmy was injected with painkillers and was prescribed a course of medication to help make his cancer as pain free as possible. We were told that the poor life as a semi-feral Timmy had endured until now had most likely contributed to his cancer and were advised Timmy would live possibly no more than one or two months. The vet requested to see him four weeks later and explained that we would need to decide what to do; I knew this decision meant having Timmy put to sleep. Back home I was devastated. How could I allow my little friend to suffer; what could I possibly do to help him? I couldn’t just leave him to die, could I?
The Healing Light
That evening, unaware of what I was doing or why I needed to do it, I laid Timmy in his basket beside the warmth of the open fire and sat beside him. I placed my hands upon my frail cat and looked deep into his sunken eyes. After a few minutes I began to feel immense pulsating energy flow throughout the whole of my body; I felt as if I was physically merging my body with Timmy’s. Then I experienced an overwhelming wave of pure love. As I stroked Timmy, his body became intensely hot as a buzzing sensation spread throughout my hands; I felt as though a light switch had turned on inside of me. Mum looked over at me, and I knew she thought what I was doing was strange, but for me this connection with Timmy felt so natural. I lightly moved my hands over Timmy’s tiny body, allowing our union to be magnetized with this intensive, magical, loving energy. My hands lay there for around fifteen minutes and Timmy looked serene and at peace. “What on earth she does with that cat I will never know”, said Mum.
The Vanishing
Every day after school I’d run home, hang up my school bag and give healing to Timmy. I told my friends about it, but they didn’t understand and thought I was just that ‘weird kid’. I couldn’t wait to share the deep connection with him day after day. After about a week Timmy started to pick up. He’d raise his head in interest at food and even started to eat three full meals daily. He began to play with pieces of string that I’d pull across the floor for him, and after three weeks he started to behave like a normal, healthy feline! I was overjoyed and we continued to relish our special healing connection every single day.
Four weeks passed and we took Timmy back to see the vet. As he prodded and poked my little friend the vet had quite a perplexed look upon his face. “I’d like to run a couple more tests” he said. We took Timmy home and after a few days we received, by telephone, the results of the additional tests. We listened to a rather bemused vet on the other end of the line as he spoke about Timmy’s renal tumour. The vet told us the tumour had reduced dramatically in size and unbelievably the growth was now the size of a pea. How could this be possible? The vet said he hadn’t seen anything like it and couldn’t offer us a firm explanation. Was it the healing that I’d been giving Timmy? Was it the pain relieving medication? To this day I can’t honestly say and neither could anyone at that time. One thing I can say is that I had the pleasure of sharing another seven or eight years with Timmy as he passed to Rainbow Bridge aged around sixteen, peacefully, with dignity and knowing he was loved.
Niki Senior is Principal of Animal Magic Training & is an animal health therapist of 22 years. She provides worldwide training in animal healing & therapy. After graduating as a Master Herbalist Niki founded AniScentia – the only totally organic canine herbal wellness & nutrition company in the UK.
www.animalmagictraining.com
You can purchase Animal Healing – Holistic Hands-on Techniques from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.