‘Death is an adventure into the next life and also a letting-go of those we love in this life.
Death can be beautiful if we see it differently.’
BENNY
Benny came into Anna’s life when she put out a plea to the universe for a cat like her previous one. A short time later a dejected-looking black-and-white moggy walked in through her open office door, strolled around the counter, looked her straight in the face and jumped onto her lap and lay down. He was filthy dirty and his eyes were in a very bad state, but he burst into a symphony of purrs. His arrival was the beginning of a love story.
It was June 2010 when I first came across Anna and Benny. Anna was a 58-year-old computer-phobic Englishwoman living in northern Italy with her Italian husband, Mimmo. Her adult son and daughter were living away at the time.
But this story doesn’t begin there: it starts 15 years earlier. At that time Anna had a cat called Sammy, a pure charcoal year-old beauty who was independent and not one for a lot of fuss and nonsense. Anna thought, Wouldn’t it be nice to have an affectionate cat like my parents’ cat? The next day Benny walked into her life.
Benny was very trusting right from the start and continued to purr as he lay on her lap while she drove to the vet.
‘He exuded calm and happiness, looking up at me with so much love and trust that it went straight to my heart,’ she said.
The vet lifted up the skin of Benny’s sore eyes, but still the purring continued.
‘I can’t hear his heart because he’s purring so loudly!’ he exclaimed.
He diagnosed herpes virus, possibly transmitted by the mother. He also wanted to operate on Benny’s left eye, which subsequently had to be removed. Thankfully, tests came back negative for other conditions and Anna was happy to take Benny home to her apartment, where she kept him hidden from sight.
‘I didn’t tell my husband straightaway. I knew he wouldn’t want me to have another cat, but I did promise Benny, I’ll never throw you out. You’ll always be with me.’
It was a month later, when Benny was stronger, that Anna came clean and showed her husband the new arrival.
‘Before he saw Benny that evening I asked him if he remembered the cat who had come into my office. He did and wanted to know what had happened to him. When I said he was at the vet’s, he replied, “What a shame. If Sammy had accepted him, we could have kept him.” That’s when I said, “She has!”’
There was a deep understanding between Benny and Anna. ‘Every night at around 11 o’clock he would come to me with a look in his eye and I knew what he wanted. I would say, “Andiamo,” which means “Let’s go” in Italian, and he would run into my bedroom and jump onto my bed.’
It didn’t matter whether Anna spoke in Italian or English, bilingual Benny always understood. Of course, in reality he was receiving the energetic detail within the verbal words.
‘I think he was almost like a dog,’ Anna told me. ‘Whenever I threw his soft ball he would bring it back to me, so excited he looked as though he was grinning. He was also so gentle – he never bit or scratched – and he was quiet. Sometimes I thought he didn’t have a voice.’
Benny’s arrival occurred just when he and Anna needed each other: she supported him through the loss of his eye and back from the brink of death, and he gave her the strength to carry on during the most difficult times of her life, when her daughter suffered deep depression and her son had an accident and nearly died.
He was especially attentive when people were sick, particularly when Anna was hospitalized with hepatitis caused by an allergic reaction to medication. At home she was in bed for over a week and he never left her side. He even followed her into the bathroom. Wherever she was, Benny would be there too. And when her black-nosed white rabbit, Nosely, was ill, Benny chose to sit with him for most of the day too.
‘I realized,’ Anna confessed, ‘that Benny was therapeutic.’
In December 2008, when Anna was visiting her parents in England, she suddenly woke at 5 a.m. with a terrible feeling of dread.
‘My thoughts were of Benny. I knew instinctively that something was seriously wrong and phoned home to check. I was reassured that all was well, but in February the following year Benny started to lose weight and was often sick. The vet diagnosed problems with his thyroid and prescribed medication, but he continued to lose weight, so I sought a second opinion. After more tests and a further wait, my premonition came true: he was diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis was not good: he was given one month to live. I was devastated. I knew then that Benny’s cancer had started back in December.’
Benny was prescribed a steroid injection and over the next four weeks he stopped being sick and his appetite improved. Anna discovered that he loved wafer-thin raw meat and he gradually began to put on weight. When she took him back for a second steroid injection, the vet was amazed by how well he was responding to treatment. He continued to receive an injection at monthly intervals. Every now and then he would be sick, but his weight improved. Despite being given just one month to live, he was still with Anna 12 months later.
In need of a break, Anna and her husband went to England to visit her family.
‘My dad had a surprise for me. It was a book called Heart to Heart by Pea Horsley. He’d read about it in the Daily Mail and thought I would enjoy it. What he didn’t realize, and neither did I, was just how important it would become to me. I devoured the book whilst I was on holiday. I must have looked so silly sitting under the umbrella on the beach crying my eyes out. I think there is a reason for everything and things are meant to be. I know now that I was meant to read it.’
Thirteen months after he was given a month to live Benny had gained more weight and was looking good. The vet scanned him and discovered the tumour had disappeared.
‘The injections were stopped immediately and I was very happy, but then as the weeks passed my instinct told me that something was seriously wrong. Each time I looked at Benny I just had this awful feeling of dread again.
At home I kept thinking about Pea communicating with animals. I knew it was real – I just had to pluck up the courage to call her. I was so worried about Benny – he looked tired and walked very slowly as though he was in pain. When I picked him up and gently stroked him, he didn’t purr, and he always purred.
My sister gave me Pea’s number in England. I felt nervous, but I knew I had to speak to her. My heart sank when there was no answer. Disappointed, I left my details on her voicemail. Ending the call, I turned around and discovered Benny staring up at me with a penetrating look on his adorable teddy-bear face. A connection was there and in my mind there was an urgency to try again, almost as if he was telling me to do so. I had the overwhelming feeling that he was dying.
I immediately rang back and began to leave another message on the answerphone – “Pea, I think he’s dying” – and in that instant she picked up and spoke to me. Her voice was so reassuring. She asked me not to tell her anything about Benny, but to write down 10 questions and to e-mail them to her along with Benny’s photo.’
It was May 2010 when I ran from the other end of the house to answer the call from Anna. I could hear her genuine distress and sense her deep love for Benny as she cried down the phone and I knew I wanted to help.
Sitting holding Benny’s image, I found myself looking into the face of a sorrowful-looking cat. He was a hotchpotch of black and white in the oddest places. Jet black enveloped his ears and the top of his head then trailed down to a sharp point just where the inner side of his left eye would have been and diagonally down across his left cheek. He had a black nose with a diagonal black smudge at the same angle as the black on his cheek. With erratic black splodges and stripes on his legs, a banana-split half-white half-black tail and strong-looking black chin, he looked as if Picasso had been trying out a new design. However, his image didn’t strike me as sorrowful for long.
Once I got myself quiet and reached out energetically to connect with Benny I came to understand he was much stronger in himself than I thought – not so much physically, but he had a presence. He felt physically fragile, just skin and bones, and he found his food smelled bad. He showed me an image of a dangly toy he used to love to play with, followed by an image of snuggling up with Anna on her bed, which I felt he loved. He showed me that he would purr when Anna stroked him, but he was only really interested in sleeping right now.
Anna verified these and other first impressions and we arranged a telephone appointment.
Anna wanted to ask Benny, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘He feels very sore, particularly his stomach area. It feels as though there’s something in his stomach and there is a resonance of cancer. He aches all over and his mouth feels sore too. This problem causes him to be sick and to feel sick, so he finds it hard to eat.’
I didn’t want to say any of this, but I knew Anna only wanted the truth and the whole truth.
‘He was diagnosed with cancer two years ago,’ she told me. ‘The intestines were the main area affected… He used to love food. He used to come into the kitchen when I was cooking dinner. He used to love treats too, but now he’s not eating much at all, just tiny bits of wafer-thin raw meat. What can I do to help him?’
I let her know Benny had requested a trip to the vet. He’d also suggested blood screening. He wasn’t ready to die yet.
‘Can you give me a sign to indicate you’re communicating with me?’ Anna asked him.
‘Feel it in your heart,’ Benny replied. ‘I speak loudly to you.’
‘Is there anything you would like me to do?’ Anna prompted.
‘I need urgent medical help. Steroids to help stimulate my appetite. Prepare for me to die,’ he instructed. ‘I would prefer to die calmly.’
Anna burst into tears, ‘I knew it. I felt he was dying. I don’t want him to suffer. He has been preparing me this whole year. I love him so much, he enters every fibre of my being. He’s my soul mate.’
Equipped with all the information she wanted, she ended the call and went about phoning the vet for an appointment.
The vet confirmed Benny’s stomach was sore because it was filled with fluid and his cancer was still present. The steroid injections were restarted immediately and within a few days Benny looked brighter in himself and was eating again.
But it wasn’t to last. Anna’s parents had visited for a couple of weeks and during the time it had taken to drop them at the airport, Benny had vomited a lot of liquid on the bedroom floor. From then on he went completely off his food and later that night he had a runny tummy and began to look very ill.
Anna rang me the next morning. ‘How is he feeling?’
I sat still and quiet for a few minutes and linked in with Benny by looking gently into his one remaining eye, tuning in with his essence by immersing myself in his whole face.
He wasted no time in telling me, ‘I’m very tired, Pea.’
I got straight to the important question: ‘Is this your time to ascend?’
‘No, not yet,’ he replied, frankly.
‘Why not?’ I gently prompted. I wanted to be certain this was for his highest good.
‘Because there is longer. The surface is deceptive,’ he said.
‘Everything tastes wrong to him,’ I reported back to Anna. ‘He loves lying on your bed. His mouth is sore and his limbs are heavy; it’s an effort to move. He showed blackness around his heart. It feels as though he needs to drink to regulate his temperature. But he would like another injection, because he says it’s not his time to go. He is not ready to ascend.’
Anna felt relieved, but deep down her heart was breaking at the thought of losing him: Not yet, Benny. Not yet, darling.
I relayed Benny’s next message to her: ‘Be prepared for losing me – the physical me – but know I am always around you. We can continue to love one another from a distance – physical distance, not emotional. You are my everything. Never forget this, sweet angel. I have brought some balance into your life. Focus on this – the balance. Remember this – it’s important.’
‘He has – he has brought some balance,’ Anna reflected. ‘I’ve had quite serious things happen where I’ve needed to be strong for others, and he’s got me through it. Please ask him if there’s anything that he’s not happy about.’
‘The pain,’ Benny answered. ‘Discomfort and feeling odd. But I am learning to meditate away from it. I feel very fragile and I do not like this feeling, because you know that I am not fragile.’
I asked him, ‘How do you feel emotionally?’
‘Preparing – preparing for the end of this lifetime.’
‘Is there anything particular he wants to eat?’ Anna said.
He showed an image of something like fresh ham and Anna told me she’d been feeding him very finely sliced veal for the past year. She told me she’d continue offering it to him, then asked, ‘Does he want to see the vet for another steroid injection?’
‘Yes. It’s not time yet,’ he said, referring to his transition.
‘Is there anything he wants to tell me?’
Benny said, ‘Never underestimate the power of love – that’s what keeps me here. It is the most powerful force in the universe. I want to have as much time as possible with you, and I am teaching you about death and your own strengths – these are important lessons. Death is a process, never forget that, not something to be over in a quick moment. Death is like birth – it takes time. Birth is also a painful experience, but we all do it. Death is an adventure into the next life and also a letting-go of those we love in this life. Death can be beautiful if we see it differently.’
As I was relaying Benny’s message, I kept hearing Thrice in a quick moment. I told Anna I didn’t know what it meant, but felt it might be relevant because it was being repeated. Sometimes I receive messages that don’t make sense to me but they are relevant to the guardian and over time their true meaning is revealed.
Benny continued, ‘Rejoice in my love for you and the power to be able to stay. The time is not yet, my love. Trust me. You will know in your heart.’
‘I feel so emotional,’ Anna shared. ‘I am so touched by what he is telling me. I’d always believed Benny was staying on for me and suffering. Will he show me a sign when it’s time for him to go?’
‘You will know in your heart,’ he said, while picturing himself still and barely breathing, his power waning. ‘Don’t push me over while I am taking pleasure from life. Not yet, my love.’
When animals talk about the time they wish to ascend some can be specific to the last day, the last hour and even the last few minutes. During this communication Benny was clearly stating he didn’t want the vet called out then and there, and later we came to learn that he had his own reason for giving such clear direction.
The following day he was struggling to walk and started to eat a slice of meat but gave up on it. Over the course of the day he grew worse and Anna was worried.
She told me later, ‘Last night he began to act strangely: he was turning around in circles and wouldn’t stop. I started to panic and called the emergency vet for advice.’
The vet advised her to give Benny some medication and it seemed to help. He visibly calmed down. The time was now 3 a.m. and, exhausted, Anna went to bed.
‘Then I suddenly woke with a start,’ she recalled. ‘It was 5 a.m. and I found Benny huddled in a corner outside my daughter’s bedroom next to a mosquito plug-in. He was wet and cold. For a moment I thought I’d lost him.’
Anna picked him up, wrapped him in a blanket and placed him on her lap. Stroking him, she said, ‘Oh no, Benny, I can’t let you go like this, my precious. I love you too much.’
Her heart was aching, but over time she could feel Benny’s body warming up.
‘I knew then I had to make a decision,’ she said. With tears running down her cheeks, she told him, ‘Benny, I’m prepared for you to go.’
As soon as she said these words, Benny began to purr and his little paws opened and closed in bliss.
‘I had this unexpected feeling of peace in my heart,’ Anna said. ‘At 9 a.m., still in my arms, he lifted his head and looked at me, asking to get down. His legs were steadier as he walked into the kitchen to have a drink. Totally calm, I picked up the phone and asked the vet to send someone over to put him to sleep later in the afternoon.’
Looking back, it’s clear to see that Benny was waiting for Anna to say she was prepared for him to leave her. He wanted her to come to the realization that he couldn’t stay with her forever, and above all he wanted her to feel ready to let him go. His will was conquering his body in order for Anna to learn this truth, and when she did, Benny let her know with his paws and purrs he was happy about her new awareness.
The call-out vet was Valentina, someone Anna knew very well. A caring and sensitive woman who had visited Benny at home a number of times, she had commented before, ‘Benny’s not a cat, he’s an angel.’
Anna said, ‘I knew the right place for him to go was at home and that Valentina was the right person to look after it. I didn’t want him to suffer any longer. Just as Benny had said, I had a knowing in my heart it was time to let him go.’
Anna’s husband asked her whether she needed anything and she said she’d like him to bring some flowers.
‘Mimmo brought five little red roses, which I arranged in the spare room with a perfumed candle and soft classical music in the background. Benny was lying beneath the desk looking comfortable with his front paws tucked under his chest. He looked calm and gave me the impression that he wasn’t suffering any more.
Throughout the day I stroked him and said, “Everything’s going to be all right, sweetheart,” and he purred back at me. I felt he was telling me, “I know.” This was one of the hardest moments in my life, but I knew I had to be strong for Benny.’
A bit later it dawned on Anna that she didn’t know where she was going to bury Benny’s body. Living in an apartment, she didn’t have a garden of her own. She called her friend Victoria in a panic and explained her dilemma.
‘Anna, it will be a privilege to have Benny in my garden,’ Victoria soothed.
The vet was punctual.
‘Benny was relaxed as we walked into the room. Valentina gently explained the procedure and reassured me that Benny wouldn’t feel a thing. Strangely, I felt strong as I stroked him. Even though my heart was breaking, I was ready.’
The vet sedated Benny before giving him a general anaesthetic. She reassured Anna once more as they waited for his breathing to slow down. Then she administered the final injection. In a split second it was over.
‘My immediate feeling was relief – as though a heavy weight had been lifted from my heart. I knew Benny wasn’t suffering any more. He looked so peaceful as he lay in the middle of the room on his pastel-grey blanket with the mouse in the corner. I buried my face in his soft little white tummy and kissed him…
I picked two red roses. I laid one next to Benny and placed the other inside the pages of Heart to Heart. As I said goodbye, the feeling of loss overwhelmed me.
The following morning as I lay in bed in a state between being asleep and being awake, I felt Benny jump onto my legs. It took me a few seconds to realize that he wasn’t with me any more, but I also knew that brief feeling on my legs was him.
I kept myself busy during the day to help ease the pain. As I was walking past the lounge, I saw him. I stopped and looked again, but he was gone. It happened in a split second. He looked so beautiful and I knew then that he was still with me. These moments gave me such comfort.’
A few days later Anna was talking to her daughter-in-law about Benny’s passing and recounting how the vet had put him to sleep in three stages: the sedative, the anaesthetic and the last injection, and then in a split second he had gone.
‘As I was saying the words, it dawned on me it was what Pea had heard during our communication: Thrice in a quick moment. Benny knew what was going to happen.’
A few weeks later, Anna’s sister, Juliana, visited. She loved animals too and was interested in Benny’s communications and Heart to Heart. As she was browsing through the book, she came across the pressed rose Anna had placed there.
‘Did you choose this page on purpose?’
‘No,’ Anna said curiously. ‘Why?’
‘You’ve put the rose in the section titled “Street-Cool Sammy”.’
Anna told me, ‘I had that knowing feeling in my heart that Benny was telling me to focus on looking after my remaining cat, Sammy.’
Later she revealed:
‘There have been times when I have felt Benny’s presence. Especially one night as I was looking out of the window deep in thought and felt Sammy rubbing against my legs. I looked down, then all around, but she wasn’t there. I walked into the kitchen and found her fast asleep in her basket. I was astonished when it came to me that it wasn’t Sammy rubbing my legs – it was Benny.
Having the communication with Benny totally changed my perspective on life and death. I think most of us are afraid of death. It’s the not knowing. But by communicating via Pea, Benny taught me a great lesson: he lessened the fear of death. During the time he gave me, he helped prepare me for his passing and helped me realize it was not the end of him or of our love.
A year later I saw a Spiritualist medium and as I walked into the room he said, “Oh, a little black-and-white cat has come in with you.”
Deep in my heart I know that he is always with me, and one day we will be together again. I thank God that I have been blessed with Benny and I will never forget him – my sweetheart, Benny.’
The next chapter continues with my journey with Morgan. It explores who makes the decision to end a life, raises ethical questions about animals being ‘put down’ and makes the comparison with the ending of a human life.