The furry medicine

Almost everybody knows the feeling that comes at the moment of stroking a beloved cat or holding it in one’s arms. It is a rush of tenderness, and a sense of ease and peace as well. Nor should we overlook the feeling of freedom of mind: beside a pet, a person is not afraid to be exactly what they are, and runs no risk of being misunderstood or rejected. An animal loves its owner selflessly and faithfully, whatever their character and whatever their standing in society. A cat feels the very best of feelings towards its owner simply because the owner is there.

Not everybody knows that a cat, besides being a friend to its owner and something to care for, can also be the household doctor. There is at present in the West a separate branch of medicine that treats human illnesses with the help of pets. It is called pet therapy, and one of its forms is cat therapy.

You may laugh at this as much as you like, but in the last decade scientific evidence has appeared that cats have a gift for healing and are able to deal with cardiovascular disease, the after-effects of a stroke or a heart attack, disorders of the mind and of the nervous system, and also with arthritis, sciatica, various kinds of pain and illnesses of an infectious nature.

One of the astonishing abilities of cats is telepathy, which these animals have mastered to perfection. The proof of it is the well-known fact that cats find their owners after those owners have moved to a new home. It is hardly to be explained by any remarkable memory on the cat’s part, since lost animals turn up at their owners’ home in houses they have never been to.

Researchers who have looked into the question closely are convinced that cats, thanks to their telepathic powers, catch their owners’ thoughts; they feel the currents of their distress and their wish to find their pet and bring it back. It is by taking their bearings from the radiation of the human brain, then, that cats find their way home. The phenomenon cannot be ignored or explained away as mere coincidence, because there are a great many examples of lost cats coming back to their owners.

Researchers are convinced that cats are the only animals possessing the extrasensory perception that is also called the “third eye”. As long ago as the nineteen-thirties Dr Joseph Vank Rhine founded the world’s first laboratory of parapsychology at Duke University (California). As a result of an enormous number of experiments the scientist proved that cats have phenomenal abilities such as foresight and telepathy. In other words, they can sense danger approaching several days in advance, and know beforehand of trouble or of their owner’s death.

These animals try by their behaviour to warn their owner of the misfortune to come. Cats also know in advance of the death of their owner or of somebody dear to them, and try to “tell” them of it. It is as though they were preparing the person for what is coming — pitying them. In other words, cats can see the future and, quite possibly, the past as well...

Nobody today is surprised by the ability of cats to sense danger approaching. These animals are taken aboard ships and submarines. And in the towns and villages that lie at the foot of volcanoes there is not one family without a cat. People rely more on these animals’ instinct than on the forecasts of scientists.

Another sign of the telepathic powers of cats is that they have no language barrier. Cats brought in from other countries understand at once the words addressed to them in a foreign tongue. In all likelihood these remarkable animals communicate telepathically among themselves as well, and their cries and purring may be put down to the expression of feeling.

Some cat owners maintain that their pets talk. Some in their own language, others in human speech, though with a peculiar feline accent. The latter, cat lovers say, happens mostly in extreme situations. There are also observations that cats read, listen to music and even watch television. Scientists hold, though, that the information from all of these sources is again taken in telepathically.

It should be said that telepathy is not the only phenomenal ability cats have. These animals are known to have a gift for healing — an energy with which they can cure even a mortally ill person.

Practically every cat owner knows that these animals can heal a great many illnesses: they usually lie down on the sore place, sometimes lick it, massage it with their claws, rub against it or stay motionless for a long while, looking their owner in the eye as though hypnotising them. Science knows of many cases in which, after a course of cat therapy, patients recovered their memory and their movement, cancers vanished without trace, heart attacks passed off, and so on.

There is a great deal of evidence that stray cats come to sick people and, having cured them, leave. In other words, having carried out their humane mission, they go — and possibly set off to another sufferer.

Psychics maintain that cats are able to see ghosts and to receive information from parallel worlds. People who study anomalous phenomena are sure that the old tradition of letting the cat into a new house first is explained by exactly this phenomenal gift of the animal’s for sensing the energy of a dwelling. A cat will not stay in a flat or a house with a bad energy. And probably a person had better not live there either. Parapsychologists maintain that if a cat’s beloved owner dies, the owner’s phantom causes the cat neither fear nor wariness: the cat is glad of the meeting. Many cases have been recorded in which, after the owner’s ghost appeared, the pet died — wishing, it seems, to be with its owner.

Information taken from D. V. Nesterov’s book “Cat Therapy. The Furry Medicine”