A Hard Start to the New Year

Grace, the day we adopted her from the shelter, age 4 months

On January 1st, the unthinkable happened.  We had to put our 6 month old kitten Grace to sleep.

Yes, you heard me right.

The day started out well.  It was my husband's birthday so we planned to go out to breakfast and see a movie with our daughters.  When we returned home, I saw Grace sitting in the kitchen.  As we walked around her, she didn't move and I thought that was odd.  I got down on my knees and spoke to her.  Usually if I talked to her she would give me some meows and move toward me to be petted. She didn't move.  Then I noticed her breathing hard.  I could see her tummy move in and out with lot's effort.

Then I started to panic.

Something in me knew this was really bad.  Since it was a holiday, her vet was closed so I called the local ER vet.  They said to bring her in right away.  When we arrived, they took her to the back to be examined and my eight year old daughter and I waited for the vet.  When the vet came to us, her face demonstrated she had bad news.  She said that Grace had FIP or Feline Infetious Peritonis. Most strains of the virus do not cause disease, but 5-10% of the cats with the virus develop a severe inflammatory response.  Once this happens it is almost always fatal.  Our poor kitten had this severe reaction and had fluid in her lungs so she was struggling to breathe.

So I knew what we needed to do.

We adopted Grace two months ago at a local shelter and both my older daughter and I already loved her very much.  Now we had to say goodbye.  Needless to say we cried and cried, couldn't believe that we had to leave Grace there and she would never come home with us.  We said our goodbyes and when we left the hospital I started crying again.

Last picture I took of Grace

I never ever thought my kitten would die.  I planned to be her human mommy till she was an old cat. But that wasn't to be and I felt cheated.

I was pissed.

I wanted her back.

And I was pissed at Spirit and at myself.  You see, I believe we come to this planet knowing what we want to experience.  So, in essence, even though I don't remember it now, I agreed to it.  And I couldn't understand why I would even agree to something so horrible.  I felt like this was a punishment, for what I do not know.

The following day I walked around like I was going to burst into tears at any moment.  By evening, I decided to to take a walk outside.  During my walk I saw two cats.  I was amazed since I never see cats on my walk, usually a few dogs are being walked by their owners or I see some birds or a stray squirrel.  I took it as a sign that Grace was telling me she was all right. However, my anger and depression took its toll and morphed into a massive migraine by that evening.

After two hours, my migraine started to ease.  As I lay in bed in the dark, I saw Grace.  I asked myself, is this a memory or really Grace's spirit?  Not caring, I asked to speak to Grace.  And she came forward.  She spoke in a grown up female voice, which surprised me.  I always viewed her as a baby.  She told me, "I know that you wanted me to grow old with you but I couldn't.  I was too sick and could no longer stay."  I knew this to be true.  I just needed to accept it.

A few days later, I learned more about why I chose to experience the loss of Grace.  Currently I am studying shamanism.  During my last class, my classmates, teacher and I practiced doing shamanic journeys with each other.  A shamanic journey is a meditative visit to one of the three spirit worlds: lower, middle, upper.  This is always done with an intention, such as for healing or advice.  I was lucky to have my teacher do a shamanic journey for me.  She described an upper dimension world full of glass houses.  She said in this place, all beings were made of light and energy (they look like columns of light to me, see #3 from this blog post for a description of what I saw).  They have no physical bodies.

This is where I am from.  This is my real home.

In this world, you can't hide anything.  Communication is done by telepathy.  And there is no such thing as touch.  So this is one of the reasons why I like to come to earth, to experience touch.   This makes sense to me because I am a very touchy-feely person.  I love to hug and when I practice Reiki, I prefer hands on Reiki versus distance healing.

There is no loss in this upper-dimension world, we know and understand that life is forever.  So this is one of the things I choose to experience here, loss, and loss of my sweet little kitten.

With every event that happens to me, whether positive or negative, it's always a learning experience. Although I miss my kitten tremendously, I understand that she was no longer able to be in the physical world.  She's in a place where she belongs, at home, across the rainbow bridge.

How to Interpret Your Dreams

I have always been a prolific dreamer and I often remember my dreams.  That being said, I forget a lot of details of my dreams if I don't write them down in a journal.  But some dreams do stay with me, especially if I think they're unusual and I think about them a lot after I wake up.

Have you ever looked at a dream interpretation dictionary, looked up your dream and it still didn't make sense to you?  I used to think that dreams were symbolic but I still could not make sense of them. Once I really starting delving into past lives, my dreams started making more sense.  I started to take my dreams more literally and they started to make sense as past life memories or stories.  This is especially helpful if you had a bad or disturbing dream and have no idea what it means.  For example, the last "bad" dream I had was quite disturbing and it woke me up in the middle of the night.  When the dream begins, I suddenly know that I am responsible for killing a young horse.  I see that the horse has been severed completely below the shoulders (gruesome I know but hang in there).  I try to get rid of the young horse by putting it into a pit.  The mother horse approaches the pit, looks into it and recognizes its her baby.  Suddenly she looks up at me with an intent to get me for this.  She starts after me and I run for my life toward a farmhouse, knowing if the horse catches up to me she will kill me (and rightly so I might add).  When I get to the door of the farm house I have to open three successive doors to enter.  I make it inside just in time and I wake up.

As I lay there disturbed about the dream, I asked myself why am I dreaming this.   My only conclusion is this must be a past life dream.  Of course I could go the traditional route and try to understand the symbology of the dream...like the young horse represents something that ended or an idea I rejected, but that seems like too much work.  It's just easier and makes more sense that this is a past life memory.

When you have a dream, ask yourself what is the lesson of the dream?  What am I supposed to learn? Then ask yourself who is in the dream and does it represent someone in your present life?  When I reflected on the dream, I felt that I was running away from a mistake that I made.  I knew within the dream that I did something wrong.  The lesson is that I have to face my mistakes and not run away from them.

As for anyone familiar in the dream I came up with a disturbing answer/thought.  I believe the soul of the young horse is the same soul of my beagle who passed away over two years ago.  Let me tell you a little about him.  His name was Tucker and he was originally my husband's dog.  He was 4 years old when we all met.  Tucker was not an easy dog to live with.  He was a dominant fellow who was barely trained when I met him (sorry hubby but it's true).  Of course here comes a new member of the family (me)  who is also an alpha female.  So of course we clashed.  Although I loved Tucker, it was hard to love him sometimes even though I tried.  When he passed away I was wrecked.  I thought I was prepared because he had been sick for months, but my heart still broke.

Tucker and I, Christmas 2004

In the weeks and months after he passed, I dreamed of him several times.  In the first dream I saw him as a young Tucker running wildly in a grassy field.  I figured that was a good sign that he was happy now.  In another dream he was older and heavier like he was toward the end of his life.  There were older kids picking on him, trying to ride him like a "horsie"  (wow I see how this applies now).  I gently tell the children to get off of him, that he's old and fragile.  Tucker looks up at me gratefully.  I understood this dream as Tucker's message to me that he was grateful that I took care of him in the end.

As I think of Tucker now, I do really miss him but sometimes I feel ashamed that I didn't have more patience with him.  Regardless of how frustrated he made me feel, I still took care of him and he was my constant companion until the end of his days.  And I think through my dreams, I have understood what kind of past we had together and how during each successive lifetime he gave me lessons to learn and I had to rise to meet the challenge of them.

So if you have a dream you can't figure out, ask yourself the following questions:  what is the lesson of the dream?  How does this lesson apply to you today?  Who is familiar in this dream to you?  Because the dream may be more than symbolic, it could actually be a past life memory reminding you of a lesson that you learned or may still need to learn.