What cats can teach us about energy healing - Pt. 2

A reminder: cats don't do placebo. If something has an effect on a cat, it is most likely a real effect and has nothing to do with anything the cat believes.

Milton was my friend J.'s cat, an 18-year-old grey tabby with a beautiful face. Early in August J. noticed that Milton was having trouble breathing and she took Milton to the vet. After a battery of tests, including x-rays, the vet returned with bad news: Milton had metastasized cancer, with tumours everywhere including her connective tissue, and fluid in the lungs. The vet aspirated the fluid to make Milton more comfortable and expressed the view that Milton would likely die within the week.

J. phoned me to ask for some energy healing for Milton. I asked her what the intent of the healing should be and she said that given Milton's advanced age (over 100 in human years) I should probably focus on comfort, pain reduction, and an easy passing. The best method for that was Reiki, so I gave Milton Reiki, with the result that she stopped hiding and began behaving more normally again.

Over the next month Milton deteriorated gradually, until by the end of August it looked like she would be passing very shortly. J. had to go to a wedding the last weekend of August and asked me to cat-sit. For the first time ever in a long history of cat-sitting I had to ask the cat owner what I should do if the cat passed away under my care. The solution included the vet, a cat carrier and public transit. It was an alarming prospect and I wasn't comfortable with the possibility of having to deal with it.

When I arrived at the house, Milton was in very bad shape indeed. She lay on her mat breathing heavily. Occasionally she would get up and slowly limp over to her food and water dish, look at them forlornly without eating or drinking, then limp back to her mat. It didn't look good.

I really didn't want Milton to die on my watch. So I gave her two hours worth of energy healing, including a technique specific to cancer that I learned from another friend who had trained with Kurt Peterson. It was intense work, but worth it. The next morning when I got up, Milton was sitting at the foot of stairs waiting for me, noisily demanding to be fed.

After her owners got home, they reported that Milton returned to eating and drinking, and even playing when presented with a catnip-filled toy. She no longer seemed to need her daily dose of morphine. She lived another two months, passing on the first of November.

To the people who now say "but she wasn't cured", I point out that she was 18 years old. Everything must die of something sometime. Healers like Kurt Peterson and Bill Bengston all say that age is a huge factor in openness to healing; at some point the body can no longer bounce back. But still, almost three extra months of life in a cat is a long time. We have seen even longer periods of survival in people. And unlike people, cats cannot be accused of living longer because they fell victim to the placebo effect (some sarcasm intended).