Do Cats Reincarnate?
This is a brief digression from the themes of my two current series. I have been contemplating sharing this anecdote on Medium for some time, but have been reluctant, because on the whole I want to be taken seriously as a researcher and writer, and not appear too mad. Despite this, some critical responders still think I’m somewhat crazy.
Two articles that I’ve come across recently have persuaded me to change my mind. The first was by Josh Rutledge. He talks about Undefinable Strange Experiences (USEs), a term which I assume is self-explanatory. He says: “Once you’ve had that USE and you really begin to awaken yourself. You expand beyond your parameters, you expand beyond your physical parameters, and you accept that life is bigger than what we know and what we see”. I believe that what happened to me was one such experience; it certainly expanded my thinking.
The second article was by Deborah Camp. Her title is ‘Are Animals Spiritual? Do They Have Souls? Thoughts on Non-Human Afterlife’. By the end of this article you will have seen why these questions inspired me to write now.
This morning, following some critical correspondence about my article ‘Reincarnation, Christianity, and Mystical Judaism’, J Byt has asked me whether all animals reincarnate, “does a snail reincarnate?”. I was already planning to share this story, so that was a coincidence pushing me further in this direction; this is clearly the right moment. What follows immediately are the facts. Then we can consider how they should be interpreted.
My wife and I live in a flat. Several years ago the flat below us was rented out to two young Greek women, who owned two cats. We got to know them all at a superficial level. Then, one Christmas, the women wanted to return to Greece, and asked us if we would look after the cats for a few days, and we agreed.
The cats liked us, and had no hesitation about coming into a different home; they seemed very happy to do so. One was a tabby cat whom we named Stripey, and the other was black. We made a strong connection with them, especially with Stripey. He would frequently jump up and sit on my lap. This was great, except that he would do this when I was trying to work on my computer, doing my research, which made it difficult to type. I didn’t want to discourage him, so tried to carry on the best I could without making him get down.
One afternoon something strange happened. While sitting on my lap as I was working, Stripey turned his head towards me, and stared intently straight into my eyes. This went on for some time and made me feel very weird, that something strange was going on. I had a powerful impression that Stripey had a message for me, was trying to communicate something, although I had no idea what that might be.
I think that my wife was out at that time. When she returned, the first thing she said upon entering the lounge was “Do you think we knew Stripey in a previous incarnation?”
As I said, those are the definite facts. How should they be interpreted? As you can probably guess, I believe, or strongly suspect, that my wife was vocalising the message that Stripey wanted to communicate to me, but was physically unable to. At the time I’m not sure my wife even believed in reincarnation, let alone in relation to animals, so this was not something I would have expected her to say. It was an unexpected comment which came out of the blue.
Rationalists and physicalists will of course dismiss such a suggestion as nonsense, but that is their problem. If that interpretation is correct, however, then it leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Are cats more psychic than humans? Can a cat have a memory of a past incarnation which a human has forgotten? If cats reincarnate, what about fish, snails, worms? Is there any level of life to which this process does not apply, or does it apply to all of creation? I wish I knew the answers.
