Because my posts on Sugar, the cat who found his way across half of the USA to rejoin his old family, still gets repeated visits, I’m going to introduce another member of his species.
I found the story of Timmy in Rupert Sheldrake’s book, The Sense of Being Stared At – and other aspects of the Extended Mind. I don’t think there is anyone living who has done more to raise the understanding of much that’s considered ‘paranormal’ than Sheldrake. He’s an excellent investigator, who has been a valuable source for me.
A lady in the UK – Jean – (Sheldrake gives surnames, but I don’t feel entitled to do that here), came home from work one day to meet Timmy waiting for her at the front door, when normally at that time he would have been sleeping on her son’s bed. She said he was “meowing pitifully” because of which she thought he was in physical pain. Nothing she did would calm him down.
The same evening she received a call informing her that her son had been involved in a bad road accident and was now in hospital, in intensive care, his life in danger. The son entered a coma and remained that way for 7 weeks. During this time Timmy never went into the son’s bedroom.
Then one evening Timmy ran into the room, jumped on the bed and began purring with deep pleasure (to those who want to ask, “How did she know his purring meant he was feeling pleasure?”, anyone who has known and loved cats knows how unmistakable such purring is. I lived with 6 cats over 35 years, so I’m qualified to say this.)
That same day, Jean tells us, her son emerged from his coma and began to recover.
Similar stories are not uncommon among cat and dog owners, and with some other non-human animals. You’re probably getting a deja vue moment because of others you’ve heard.
One of the reasons why some people refuse to believe a story like that, is that humans have bigger brains than cats, so, assuming that brain-size is all-important, cats should not be able to do something a human can’t do. Humans are capable of telepathy, but we don’t seem to be capable of the kind of constant connection that Timmy obviously had.
It’s about time we gave up on our big-brain superiority, and waited until science is capable of investigating such things – which I believe won’t come until we reach the stage of super-intelligent AI. I suspect machines are going to one day teach us a lot about what we don’t know.
When I speak of Timmy’s talent for telepathy though, Sheldrake has reported on another cat who took this talent to another level. But I’ll save the story of Walskins for my next post.
Alan Conrad 