‘The soul is learning by experience. The mind limits the experience, but the heart knows. Listen to the heart more. This is where the truth resides – in the feelings.’
BARNI
What happens if your animal goes missing and you’re not able to say goodbye? How do you find peace in order to move forward? In this chapter Barni shares his view on the purpose of loss and explains what it is like in the afterlife.
Barni’s guardian, Jacqui, was a middle-aged mental health professional with a big love of felines. She had contacted me because her seven-year-old cat, Barni, had gone missing. Previously, Barni had vanished for 10 days and returned thin and frightened. This time he’d disappeared just before Jacqui had gone away on holiday and still hadn’t reappeared when she’d got back two weeks later.
A photogenic Norwegian Forest cat looked up at me from a recumbent position in the photograph I was holding. I was immediately struck by the intensity of the large golden eyes looking directly down the camera lens. With his head to the right, his hips to the left and his long-haired tail wrapped round the front of his body, Barni was an impressive sight. The second thing that struck me was the pale grey Elizabethan ruff framing his strong lion-like face and large bold ears. Barni was a cat of notable handsomeness, with marbles of glorious grey fur progressing throughout his body, accenting his regal pale heart-shaped ruff and the darker stripes working outwards across his back in perfect parallels. Shades of grey had never been more enchanting.
Jacqui wrote:
‘We chose Barni after losing our beautiful Maine Coon, Jasper, to kidney cancer… Norwegian Forest cats look a bit similar to Maine Coons and are big cats but generally easy-going and friendly. I came across a woman through the Norwegian Forest Cat Club whose surname was “Healing”, which appealed to me. She sent me pictures of her litter and I chose Barni, who was known then as Barni Rubble. When he was 12 weeks old my six-year-old daughter, Jess, and I were able to go and collect him. After considerable discussion on the trip home we finally settled on calling him Barni, but to me he will always be my Barni Bear.’
It was one of England’s well-known blue-grey days when I first sat in my office to forge a connection with Barni. I was immediately struck by his wisdom. He came across as a wise soul with a mature and regal air. He also had a measured, even temperament. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. To see whether we had a good connection, I began by asking him when he’d gone missing. He gave me the impression it was late afternoon and Jacqui confirmed that.
I got the sense Barni loved climbing trees and had a courageous and adventurous nature. He showed me he was very agile and found jumping effortless. In further imagery he pictured sunbathing in front of floor-to-ceiling glass and being given a special diet in the form of prescription dry biscuits. He expressed happiness as he pictured himself batting at water from the tap, catching butterflies and hunting mice. Jacqui confirmed these details and also the impressions I’d received that Barni was neutered, micro-chipped and didn’t wear a collar.
‘We used to put a collar and ID tag on him but he came home on numerous occasions without them, so we just gave up in the end.’
Barni went on to reveal that he’d been missing his feline friend, Sacha, who’d been killed in a car accident. I felt they used to be very close and he’d been unable to accept that he was no longer with him. Jacqui said she felt the same.
Barni shared a random image of a small spaniel or Jack Russell-sized dog who was quite noisy and bouncy.
‘We have a small King Charles spaniel who is full of life,’ Jacqui said. ‘He could be the small, noisy, bouncy dog.’
Barni then showed a very sweet image where he was draping his paws round Jacqui’s neck and giving her a ‘hug’.
‘Barni is the gentlest creature,’ she told me. ‘The way he puts his huge soft velvety paws onto either side of my face and literally pulls my face around to look directly into his eyes is not something I ever remember another pet doing. And at other times he just puts a paw either side of my neck and relaxes.’
I got the sense that Barni had gone because he wasn’t coping without Sacha. I could feel he was sad and grieving. I felt he was still in his physical body and he gave me the impression he would like to go home.
When I asked him where he was, he showed me the route he had taken. He had gone out of the garden and to the right on what felt like his normal patrol route and had had to stay high off the ground because there were dogs to the right and he couldn’t cut through their garden. Continuing in that direction, he pictured a copse or larger wooded area that he liked to visit. He gave images of going under a very large gate and across a field to this copse. On the other side of it he pictured another field and an orderly housing estate. There was a woman in that direction who fed him.
Jacqui said the information made perfect sense. She didn’t know if any of her neighbours were feeding Barni, but said she wouldn’t put it past them, as he was a real charmer.
The final image from Barni was of something that looked a bit like a propeller, but I felt I was looking at it the wrong way up.
Jacqui later got back to me with further information:
‘When Barni went missing on a previous occasion my neighbour told me that a nearby farmer had once arrived on her doorstep with him, asking if he was her cat. She had told him where I lived, but he didn’t turn up and sadly I didn’t know anything about this at the time. Thankfully, Barni did return that time. You mentioned a particular object like a propeller that was upside down. I found this object on the land owned by the man my neighbour had mentioned. It is some kind of air-pollution measuring device. I asked at the farm, but they denied having seen Barni and even denied talking to my neighbour on the previous occasion he went missing. This didn’t seem right and made me feel uncomfortable.’
Jacqui continued to ask people about Barni and ensured her missing cat posters remained up, but sadly we were unable to locate him. Still, she remained optimistic:
‘Jess and I both have dreams that he is home or coming home and we take these as good signs.’
It was April the following year when Jacqui made contact again.
‘I had a strong sense of urgency to call you,’ she wrote. ‘I feel that Barni wants me or is lost or ill, maybe unable to find his way home.’
Some time between her e-mail and the time I was able to reach her, due to my prior client commitments, she’d had an even more urgent feeling Barni needed to connect. When I communicated with him, I could sense he was a very still and powerful presence. I also felt he had ascended.
‘More peacefully than you will ever know,’ he told me. ‘She knows I have ascended too.’
It seemed to me that Barni had been put to sleep. To be sure this information was from him, though, I went through some new impressions with Jacqui. In one image he showed that he loved being brushed while on a lap.
‘Oh, yes – say “brush” to him and he’d come running,’ Jacqui verified.
Barni showed he liked to follow Jacqui round the garden. He came across as more like a dog than a cat, but he did love to climb trees, which dogs still have to master! He expressed a sense that he and Jacqui had a very close heart connection. Once Jacqui had confirmed these and other details, I had the unenviable task of sensitively sharing with her my impression that Barni had now transitioned from his body.
‘I knew you were going to say that to me,’ she said. ‘In my heart, I already knew he had died.’ Nevertheless, in the hope that her gut feeling was wrong and Barni was still alive, she went on, ‘Can he give us any clues so that we can find him?’
‘Not in this lifetime,’ Barni replied. ‘You have to let me go now.’
‘Does he know that we love and miss him and think about him often?’
‘I feel it in my heart every day. We were special. I will never forget that.’
‘Does he know he has left a huge gap, especially in my life, and that I will never forget him?’
‘Yes, but I am still with you, more subtly than before, but still with you. You miss my physical presence, my character, but I am still with you, lying on your bed and watching you in the garden. Forever loyal.’
Some people don’t think of cats as a loyal species, but I have communicated with cats who have expressed incredible faithfulness to their guardians. You only have to take a read of A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen to see an example of how an incredibly loyal cat helped turn a man’s life around.
‘Does Barni have any message for us or the other animals?’ Jacqui asked me.
‘Be still and quiet, my love, and you will sense me, feel me, see me, hear me. I am all around you and within you. Energetically, we are One.’
At the end Jacqui said, ‘I have experienced a lot of loss in my life. Jasper and two other much-loved cats were lost to cancer, three other cats were lost to car accidents, and our second Sacha, Sacha 2, and Barni vanished at a time when there were a lot of pet thefts in the area. Having had so many major losses, I have to ask: is there a purpose to all this?’
Barni answered, ‘The purpose of loss is always the same: growth – growth of the soul to divine awareness. The pain is part of letting go because the soul has not comprehended that life goes on. The soul is learning by experience. The mind limits the experience, but the heart knows. Listen to the heart more. This is where the truth resides – in the feelings.’
Despite the pain of letting go, Jacqui was glad to hear from Barni and later revealed:
‘After the communication there was a sense of relief and release that he could now be at peace. Although I was not able to say goodbye in person, I do feel our communication helped enormously. When he communicated that his death was “more peaceful than I could ever know” and we both felt he may have been put to sleep, I felt reassured that someone had had the compassion to help him and take him to a vet.
Not being able to have a ceremony for him in our garden was very difficult. Barni was a huge part of my life, and still is. I still grieve for him and I don’t think I have fully found peace within myself. At some point we need to have some sort of memorial for him. However, as I say this, I feel he is telling me he is fully alive and just fine, thank you. No memorial needed! He is still very alive for me in many ways. Sometimes when I feel his presence laughter comes.
I can see that Barni was helping me on my soul journey; he helped me on my journey of learning to be. I have always had a strong connection with animals and I feel I’ve been able to have a calming effect on them. It is as though they feel understood. Having such a strong connection with animals has enabled me to believe in myself a bit more too.
I now believe that those we love are not lost to us. We may not have that physical connection with them but they are with us in our hearts and minds.’
Another form of reassurance came from the way Barni finished his communication. He expressed a great sense of peace as he explained what it felt like to experience the afterlife: ‘It is as though I am floating, as air, as aether, free and limitless.’
In the next chapter you’ll read about Boo Boo, a budgerigar who died very quickly from an accident but taught his guardian how to heal her broken heart when he communicated in his new spirit form.