Last Wishes: The Most Important Conversation You Will Ever Have With Your Pet

As pet parents, we know it is coming. For nearly all of us, we will outlive our pet, and this means we will have to navigate their end of life transition for them. But what does your pet truly want? Are they aware of what is coming in their life? Is there a way you can find out your pet's last wishes and hear from them about how they want their own death to unfold? Animal intuitive Shannon Cutts unpacks all of these questions for you through a heartfelt story of a beloved feline and her human mom.

In this episode you will learn:

• What is and isn't possible to talk about in an end of life planning animal communication conversation
• Why and how your own pet parent intuition plays a vital role in these conversations
• What types of questions your pet really wants to talk through with you before their situation becomes urgent
• What to do if your pet's end of life wishes may be difficult or even impossible to fulfill and how to navigate that together
• How having an end of life conversation with your pet now can change the entire course of your future life together
• And so much more

Free resource: Pet Parent Grief Support Guide: https://www.animallovelanguages.com/griefsupportguide

Are you animal communication curious? Have I got something special for you! My new Animal Communication Adventure to Mastery student learning program just launched! This program is designed to be a gentle, yet thorough, serious, yet lighthearted path to interspecies fluency that pairs beautifully with my ongoing live Animal Communication Adventure Practice Circle for developing student practitioners. Visit animallovelanguages.com and click on programs to join us.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Core Belief
• 2:52 Naming The Topic: End-Of-Life Wishes
• 6:19 Why Ask Your Pet About Dying
• 10:57 Meet Queen Ellie And Nina
• 16:55 Quality Of Life And Dignity
• 21:21 Signs, Timelines, And Murmuration
• 26:22 Ellie’s Specific Wishes: Burial And Dusk
• 31:14 Turning Crisis Into Peace
• 36:54 Aftercare, Light Spa, And Healing
• 41:19 Reincarnation Hints And Final Takeaways
• 47:31 Closing And Ways To Get Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Welcome back to Let's Talk to Animals, the podcast all species can enjoy together. My name is Shannon Cutz. I am an animal sensitive and intuitive, a Reiki master practitioner, and an animal communication teacher with Animal Love Languages.com. And for our purposes here today, I am also your friendly neighborhood hostess and guide through the wild, wise, and wonderful world of interspecies communication. Call me crazy, but I truly believe that animal communication has the power to save, heal, and restore our planet for all species to enjoy and share. When we learn to communicate with one another, we begin to realize we are so much more alike than different. We care about each other. We become friends. On this podcast, we talk about what the animals have to say and share and why our pets truly are our partners, empathic friends, and teachers. I am so glad you have joined us here for this fresh new episode of Let's Talk to Animals. So let's dive in. Welcome back to Let's Talk to Animals. Shannon here. And today is a long overdue topic. And I know I say that a lot, and that is primarily because your podcast administrative coordinator and your podcast planner and your podcast hostess and your podcast presenter are all one and the same. And I've got a long list of topics that I want to talk with you about. But one of the big ones that's really been cropping up a lot, especially this year, this seems to be a real year of transitions. And actually, over the last couple of years, we've had quite a number of transitions of just real deep soul pet bonds, long-term bonds, twin flame bonds, where I have had the great good fortune to walk alongside some of these interspecies families, spanning all the way back to my student days when I was doing free animal communication sessions to get practice and build confidence. And was just grateful for anyone who was willing to permit me to talk with their animals and gracious enough to provide a little bit of feedback to me about how I did. So it's an especially poignant topic for me. And in fact, today I have a very special story to share with you by way of walking you through a conversation that I truly believe that every pet parent, animal guardian, needs to have with your pet, with your animal love. And that is the conversation about our pets' end-of-life transition wishes. What do they want? What is their vision for their end of life adventure? It's all too easy to take a look out into the future, whether it's the very near future, maybe you're listening to this and you can see it coming and it's coming like a freight train. Or maybe it's the far future. Maybe you know that you're, or at least believe or feel that you are going to have many, many years with your pet, with your animal love, and yet it's coming. This is why I say that pet parents, myself included, we are oh so brave. Oh so brave. Because with very, very few exceptions, maybe some of the larger parrot species, sometimes the reptiles, sometimes equines, depending on when we meet and what age and stage of life we are respectively in, most of the time we know going in that our pet will pass before us. And so we know going in that that grief is coming, that that end of life transition process is coming, that that fear factor experience is coming. And yet, because for most of us, again, I don't want to rule out anyone who may have had a different experience growing up or comes from a culture where the death process and death and dying itself is a more open topic of conversation and even an honored and appreciated aspect of life. But for most of us, it's just not. And it's like going on the roller coaster with all of the fear and none of the fun. And way back in my student days, when that one day arrived and I got curious enough to wonder, what does the word pet mean? The word pet, we use it ubiquitously. Everybody knows what that means. You don't have to explain it. But where did it come from and why do we use it? And I decided to ask the animals this question, and they told me, well, that's easy. We are your partners, empathic friends, and teachers. So essentially, pet is an acronym. And this is an aspect of life that they very much wish to teach us about. There are so many lessons we can learn from our pet loves. It's one of the reasons why I do my free intuitive development for pet parents webinar series, because one of the things they want to teach us about is our intuition. And you're going to hear about that in today's story. But they also want to teach us about the aspects of our life that we're afraid of, not we shy away from, maybe that we even treat as unnatural. So many of us have grown up in cultures and certainly in a time period where death is viewed as a comprehensive problem to be solved and not an aspect of life, a valued, a treasured aspect of life, a continuation of life. And through that exploration, I have followed the animals into the wonderful world of pet reincarnation. And that's become somewhat of a favorite request among my animal pet parent clients and my animal communication community is exploring what happens next, really viewing the end of life, the death and the dying process itself as an end-of-life adventure, not finality, not an ending with no new beginning. And that's really what I want to talk with you about today. And I want to share a very special story with you. I'm going to share the story of Ellie. Queen Ellie. Those who know her knew she embodied all aspects of that title. Queen Ellie the Feline. I met Queen Ellie and her mom, Nina, when I was still a very, very eager, nervous student. And my very first communication with Ellie happened in the context of her feline family, her pride. So I was talking with Queen Ellie and Kitty Carlisle and Apollo. And I've since had the true honor of helping support Apollo through his end-of-life transition and most recently Queen Ellie. And Ellie is a consonant teacher. She is, she's a natural, as all of our pets are, but she just really brings something special to the experience. And Nina and I have kept in touch over the years, and I've had conversations here and there with each one of her felines, but she reached out again most recently to let me know that that freight train was coming. And she was looking at the possibility that Ellie would need to transition soon. And Nina is exceptionally self-aware, herself, highly intuitive. She's a real nature baby like I am, loves grounding, loves being out in nature, loves herb gardens, all those wonderful things. She reached out to me and she said, I just think we need to have the conversation. And I was so grateful for this because I truly, truly feel like one of my missions, and one of many, if you will, is it animal intuitive in this world, is making that suggestion before it's needed. You can have this conversation. Animal communication allows us to do that. We can have this conversation with our pets. So we're not left shouldering all of the responsibility and all of the burden of making decisions on behalf of the one that we love so, so terribly much. And never knowing whether we're anywhere close to what they really wanted and craved and hoped their end-of-life transition adventure would be like. And so I, of course, was absolutely honored and delighted. And we had a conversation with Ellie. And in that conversation, I was able, with Nina's help, to craft questions to ask Ellie what she wanted and how she viewed this end of life season of her embodied life. And if you've been listening to Let's Talk to Animals for Some Time Now, you are already quite aware that in my world, the embodied life ending does not mean life ends. And often it ushers in the start of a whole new series of adventures, what I call the joyful reunion through pet reincarnation. So Ellie was eager to talk with me and to share what she wanted. And her wishes were very specific. One of the things that was so important to Ellie was that she wanted to retain her dignity, her independence, her free agency all the way up to the very end. And the moment that she lost even a little crumb of that independence, she was out. She did not want to have that part of the experience. This is one of the many wonderful gifts that we get, that we receive, and also that we give to our animals when we have these end-of-life transition conversations, is we find out where is that line in the sand? And it easily, easily addresses the top fear and regret that I work with every week when I'm facilitating one-to-one animal communication conversations for pet parents and their people, which is, did I let you go too soon or did I wait too long? That is one of those decisions that can linger. We're left to make it all on our own. And we really don't know. Maybe if we're highly intuitive, we can sense and feel into it. But the only way to know for sure is to ask, to ask the one who does know and does have a preference and does have a vision for exactly what they want their end-of-life transition adventure to look and feel like, and not just for themselves, but for everyone. Because one of the things our pets are so good at is living from their right brain hemisphere. I call it the hemisphere that humanity forgot. Why do we have it? What is it good for? What's it even up there for? It's our connective hemisphere, it's our intuitive hemisphere, it's the hemisphere that feels versus the hemisphere that thinks. It's the hemisphere that never loses touch with love, but with the bond that we share with others. And so this is what makes animal communication possible. And this is what makes it possible to hear from our pets in real time to find out what do you want? What do you need? And for our animals, part of their wants and needs always include us. And so often when I'm having these one-to-one conversations with pets who are going through this end-of-life transition, they have questions and fears about you, about your well-being, about the burden that you're shouldering on their behalf, and about aspects of the end-of-life adventure, like how they want to be remembered and honored and their legacy. Sometimes they even start talking about pet reincarnation. And we always have to play that one close to the vest if the pet parent is not quite ready to talk about it. But they have that bigger picture connected vision, almost like they know the future and the past and the present all at once. If you've ever watched that beautiful movie Arrival with Amy Adams, you know what I'm talking about. And if you haven't watched that movie, go and watch it. That's your homework assignment today. So you can learn what I'm talking about and what a beautiful vision it can be for how we can live. So as I'm talking with Ellie, that was the first thing she highlighted. I don't want to lose my independence. And you have to understand Queen Ellie. Set aside any opinions or beliefs that you may have about whether it's okay for cats to be indoor, outdoor, or outdoor versus indoor only. And just understand that from the earliest moments of Ellie's life, she was always an indoor-outdoor cat. And she actually caught her own food. And her favorite food was moles, those little cute hamster-like animals that run around on the ground. And Ellie was a very, very good hunter. She was the vole's worst nightmare. She loved to catch and eat her own prey. So this is a cat who was eating a whole food diet, which is the best of all worlds, as long as that whole food diet doesn't stray near any of our human-made pesticides or chemicals. This is actually an ideal feline life, if you think about it. And so what made this so important for Queen Ellie personally is that she just happened to have a very aggressive cancer of the jaw that was slowly cutting off her ability to use her mouth, to breathe, to do all of the functions that we all take for granted. It had created all kinds of disfiguration in her face, her eyes were slanted, but she was still out there, still hunting and catching her voles. And she was very clear with mom that the moment that she could not do that for herself anymore, she was done. And keep in mind, mom was also spoon feeding her inside, wiping up after her. She was allowing all of that, but this was a very important aspect of her feline life. And she associated it with quality of life. And that's really what we're looking for here. We're looking at where's the barometer on quality of life. And that was very important to Ellie for her quality of life. And so when we got to the point where she could no longer hunt, catch, and eat these little bowls that she loved, she was gonna lose her quality of life. And that's the point at which she wanted to transition. The next thing that she shared, and she had equally strong feelings on this, which is so wonderful, right? Because once we can feel and sense and know, yes, this is my animal, and this is the strong opinion or feeling or desire they have about their end-of-life adventure, well, it takes that burden of fear away from us and having this executive authority over the choices of another to where we're always left wondering, did I do it right? Did I get it right? Did I do what you wanted? Were you happy with how I handled it? Do you wish I'd done things differently? Well, you no longer have to carry that burden by yourself. We can ask, we can ask and find out. Ellie had very, very clear final wishes that her body was to be buried. And this can be a little challenging, especially when I'm working with a pet parent who has their own preferences or opinions or even their own preset ritual. I've worked with pet parents who have a beautiful little urn or a piece of jewelry or art after they've cremated each one of their animal loves. And so it can be a little confronting sometimes when we find out that we might need to break with that tradition. But there are other ways of continuing it. Just because one animal wants to be buried and another animal wants to be cremated doesn't mean we still can't have a ceremonial urn or we still can't use a bit of their fur, for instance, or a scale or a feather to create beautiful jewelry or some kind of meaningful memento. So, of course, whenever I get these strong wishes, I'm always treading with care and empathy and patience as we talk through the pet's final wishes. But in this particular case, I was so relieved. Nina was all ears and wanted to honor Ellie's wishes in the exact way that Ellie laid out. And she was very, very clear that she wanted to return the physical aspect of her. She wanted it to return to the earth that she so loved. She said, I want to be part of the earth to contribute. I want to fertilize my herb garden and the beautiful trees, and I want to infuse my gratitude, my life force essence into the water. I want to feed the little voles that I've so enjoyed. She was so clear. And Nina was so open and immediately started planning the most beautiful memorial planting underneath a little fig tree. And it just became this beautiful, expressive project. And one of the things that I've discovered first and foremost for myself as a pet parent is that when we grieve, we need something to do, which is why it's so important to find out what our animals want and what they need and how to honor them. We need something to do. And I often get that question when I'm talking with an animal who's in that end-of-life adventure process and they're transitioning, and their person wants to know how can I honor you? And there's two facets to that. One is whatever it is that we do to honor our memories of the animal we love so much, whether that is to create a little crystal grid or make a photo triptych. That was one of the other things that that Nina did that was so beautiful, is to make a little photo triptych, three different images of Ellie with a beautiful little butterfly. So there are all kinds of different ways that we might wish to bring honor and recognize the depth of the love that we've shared. But our animals often also have their own wishes. I've had animals asked to be cremated or buried with favorite toys or special objects, or they have asked for a particular crystal. One of my pet clients asked that his mom start taking up jewelry making again, something she had let lapse in part to care for him. Our pets, they know us. They know what moves us and what brings us comfort. I had another pet parent client whose horse wanted her to find a soft blanket that was the same shade as his winter coat to wrap herself up in so he could give her a hug anytime he wanted to. We don't have to guess. And often they know what will bring us comfort better than we do, because again, they live from their right brain hemisphere and their unconditionally loving heart versus that left brain dominant way of life that we have grown so accustomed to, so domesticated into, as Don Miguel Ruiz, the Toltec Shaman, says, Ellie was very specific about how she wanted to be honored and how she wanted to be buried. The other thing that we tend to factor out, and this isn't always the case, but so often our animals have a real sense of their timeline and around when their transition is going to take place. And by transition, I mean their death, their release of the physical body, and their transition into their light body, their etheric body into what we might call the soul or the spirit space. The animals over the years have taught me that they view these bodies like astronauts suits, like spacesuits. And I've talked about that here on the podcast before. And when we think about what a space suit is used for on the moon or in outer space or in the space station, wherever we are outside of Earth's atmosphere, we need to wear a spacesuit because it keeps us from floating away. But here on Earth, when we're wearing a spacesuit, it makes it really hard to walk. And it's a really great analogy. It's a really great visual and sensory analogy for what it feels like when your pet lifts up and out of their physical body or spacesuit. They float, they recalibrate into a lighter, higher vibration frequency. And what happens, at least this is my own personal experience talking with many hundreds of animals who have gone through this end-of-life adventure and transition process. What happens in most cases where there isn't an abrupt or immediate departure through, let's say, a sudden accident or a catastrophic injury of some sort, where there's an immediate departure. In any case where there's any kind of a runway, a little bit of lead time, what happens is the soul begins to make what I have come to call murmuration. This comes from the term for when we see a flock of birds practicing, building up their strength, getting ready for the long winter or spring migrations. And it's the same way with the soul. I saw this very vividly when I was helping support my father through his end of life, his hospice and end-of-life transition. And it became very clear at certain points that his soul was really not in his body anymore, but his body hadn't shut down yet. It can be a real challenge. It can be a real feels like a game of pinball to get out of a physical body. Things need to happen just so, in a very specific order, in order for the physical organism to shut down. If you've ever had that experience of getting in your car and turning the key, the engine doesn't turn over, but the lights come on and the pedals still work, and you can still use the windshield wiper. So the car isn't running, it can't go anywhere, but it's not dead either. It's still getting fuel, it's still getting power, it's just not able to move. And that was very similar to what I saw with my dad's hospice and his transition experience, where his body just didn't shut down in a linear fashion, and it became very difficult for his spirit, his soul, to get out of his physical body. And so this can happen, and it does happen when we don't have an abrupt transition through what I just mentioned, either maybe a very sudden issue like gastric torsion or impact through a speeding car or something like that, catapults the soul out of the body. In most cases, there's a little bit of a runway, and the soul is already doing murmurations. And this is what infuses that awareness of the timeline. Well, with Ellie, she let me know that something significant was going to take place in the next two weeks. So she wasn't giving me a definitive timeline. And looking back now, now keep in mind that every single time I talk with an animal, they're teaching me something new. And so if you ever have a session with me and I share things like what I share here on the podcast, just know that I'm not, you know, some think tank of one sitting around somewhere kicking all this stuff up. These are not my personal private pet theories about how things work. This has all come from learning and experiencing and talking to animals and hearing from their point of view what happens. And there's always more to learn. I'm never going to say that I'm the ultimate authority or the authority on any of this, but this is just what I have learned so far. And one of the things that I've learned is that often there is a sense of this timeline. I've had animals say three months. I've had animals say within the next year. With Ellie, it was two weeks. And she did not give me clarity beyond this two-week period. I just got a sense, and this is what I shared with Nina, her mom. I just got a sense that something important was going to shift in the next two weeks that would be definitive in the sense of giving us a sense of when Ellie was ready to go. Ellie was also very clear through explaining that the moment that she lost 100% quality of life, which to her equated with being able to go outside and hunt and catch and eat her own prey and be the indoor-outdoor cat that she has always been, she wanted to go. She did not want to linger. She did not want a quote unquote natural death. She wanted help when her quality of life was no longer accessible to her. So that was another aspect of giving me this two-week window of opportunity, if you will. Window of more information is coming. It was more about giving her mom signs to watch for that she was ready. And that was her sign. And within a week, she got to that point where she could no longer catch and safely consume her prey. And it was very obvious when she got to that point. And so, of course, the next obvious question here as we're going through this end-of-life planning, adventure planning process is well, okay, so you want an assisted passing and you want to be buried. Do you have any preferences about where, who, when, what time of day even? I always ask these questions. It's very important. And I've discovered over the years that our pets always have answers. They have preferences. And they also understand when perhaps their preferences are not always able to be honored in full. A perfect example of this is a pet's desire to pass at home. Depending on when everything lines up, we can put the intention out there. We cannot control the free will that characterizes an aspect of this 3D human experience we're having. And that can include something happening to the only vet in the area who's able to do in-home euthanasia. And they're suddenly no longer available. And so the only other option is that we need to go to a clinic. And so we always talk through these things. When I'm having these end-of-life adventure conversations with the pet and their people, I'm always talking through these various scenarios to make sure that we're clear if something that a pet wants or asks for is not able to be provided through the shifting sands of free will that we can never plan for fully in advance, that they understand why. And to find out what aspects feel like non-negotiables and what aspects have a little bit more wiggle room. And that can be very important too. And so with Ellie, she had a very clear idea of what she wanted if possible. And what she wanted was to transition around dusk. So later in the day, after having an enjoyable day with mom and her sister Kitty Carlisle, and hopefully spending as much time outdoors as possible and being able to watch the daylight soften. And then she wanted to transition at home through in-home euthanasia. And in Ellie's case, Nina was able to make all of that happen and already had had time to pick out a beautiful little spot for Ellie's burial and a perfect little fig tree to plant and serendipity grace and the beauty of our light team and the unconditionally loving ones who watch over us. Two of her friends arrived to help dig Ellie's grave and be with her. And it just turned into a really beautiful kind of a sundown, sunset experience for everyone to honor Queen Ellie. And it was just extremely, extremely clear that it was the right moment. It didn't take the full two weeks. And Ellie was absolutely right. There was going to be something significant within that two-week period that would become the signifier that, okay, mom, it's time. And Nina, being the beautiful soul that she is, reached out after Ellie had transitioned out of her physical body, wanting to check in, just wanting to double check and make sure did I get it all right. We can never really completely. Disregard or lose that sense of could I have done it even better? Because that's the part of us that wants to honor the one we love so much. And as I mentioned earlier, we need something to do. And when we are awakened, when our soul is awakening and we are really bringing what I call our iOS, our intuitive operating system online, as Nina has been working on over these years. We also recognize that just because the body's gone, the relationship is not gone. And the proof of that is that the love is still there. If the love is still there, the relationship is still there, physical body or no physical body, spacesuit or no spacesuit. And Nina wanted to have the experience of that continuation. And she wanted it as quickly as possible. And so we checked in with Queen Ellie. And it was such a profound conversation. Of course, Nina wanted to know where are you now? What is it like there? I'm actually going to read you the translation of what Queen Ellie shared with me. Of course, as an animal communicator, I am essentially translating a nonverbal language, a language of images, sounds, sense, as in smells, tastes, tactile sensations, emotions, feelings, energy and motion, and deep gut knowings. And I'm packaging all that up and I'm translating it into words so I can share it with, in this case, Nina, or with you when I'm talking with your pets. And so when I say this is what Ellie said, what I really mean is this is the essence of Ellie's message translated into words. And I'm gonna read it to you. Ellie said, Mine was a life exceptionally well lived, and I had a good death. That's a little tidbit from what I call my lexicon of tells. It's a secret intuitive language that we develop with ourselves when we start learning animal communication. I teach all of that inside Animal Communication Adventure to Mastery, which is my student program. But it's a phrase that is meaningful to me in a deeply impactful way. And so when I hear the words good death, I know exactly what that means. And it relates to the Buddhist precept of no unfinished business. All is calm and at peace. I'm ready to go. She said it was a good death. This place is so pure. The purity of it becomes just a distant memory when we are what she calls earth school. It is like nothing you could put into words. So much love. And that is as close as I can get to translating Ellie's message into words. Often when I'm communicating with an animal, I say to their human, I say, I wish we had a little Wi-Fi or a hot spot or something where I could just airdrop you exactly what I'm feeling right now. But the best I can do is translate it into words for you. And so that's what I'll do. She also shared, I kept my quality of life to the last, exactly as I wanted it to be. Going out the heroine in my own life story. And isn't that what we want for our pet loves? If we're being honest, isn't that what we want for ourselves? So for those of you who haven't carved out any time and emotional space to ponder your own end of life adventure wishes, perhaps this is the invitation you've been waiting for to do so. To think about what it would look like for me to go out the hero or the heroine with my own life story. What would I want? What would I need? What would make it just perfect for me personally? And of course, with animal communication, we also have the ability to have that conversation in advance for our pets. And what I'm about to share with you is why I asked Nina for permission to share Ellie's story on this podcast episode. I asked Ellie what had made it so perfect for her. And of course, just the opportunity to share in advance and have this planning time and have this opportunity to have a conversation about one of the two most important and impactful events that we all, without question, without exception, experience when we're in an embodied life adventure. Just that ability, which so many pets don't get, was in and of itself deeply meaningful. But she also went on to share that for her, being given the voice and the choice to shape her own end of life adventure, to participate in how it was going to go and what she wanted. For her, it made the difference between trauma and peace. And of course, I wanted to know more about that. So I asked her about it. And she said, because of the cancer and what it was doing to my jaw and my ability to eat and drink and even breathe and move about. We had a heads up that there were only two ways this was gonna go. And before I go further, I want to say this is very much backed up by Queen Ellie's veterinary team, giving Nina, mom, the heads up on this aggressive cancer and how it might take Ellie down and some warning signs to watch for. And so Ellie was very aware this thing was unstoppable. It was slowly cutting off everything that she needed to sustain her life. And the vet had told Nina that one of the biggest risks was that a blood vessel would burst and she would actually suffocate from the bleeding in her mouth and throat. And so Ellie was very aware of this. Of course, our pets are always listening to us. Right from my student days, the pets were telling me our favorite channel is UTV. We watch and listen to UTV all day long. We know you guys better than you know yourselves. And isn't that the truth? And so Ellie was very aware just through Nina's reactions and emotions about what was coming down the pike for her. She wanted none of that. And she said, for me, being invited to participate in crafting my own end-of-life adventure turned it into an adventure instead of the trauma that it was inevitably going to become. She was saying, and it also made the difference between the quality of my final memories with mom and her final memories with me. And what often happens, and this again is one of the most frequently requested session types that I do, and often it's grief. It's after the pet has transitioned, and there are all these questions about did I wait too long? Were you in pain? Did I let you go too soon? Should I have tried harder? Should I have fought longer? All of these questions that our pets can actually help us to answer. And in this case, Ellie is saying for me, it simplified everything and it created last memories for us both that were peaceful instead of even more painful. So if you can imagine the difference using Ellie as an example, of course, she's given me her permission to do that. Let's say that blood vessel had burst, and mom Nina would have then been in a position of having to either deal with it at home and watch her bleed out and pass away, or rush her to the emergency room, knowing really very little, if anything, could be done. And then carrying that burden forward of if only I hadn't done this, if only I had done that, if only I kept you indoors, which Ellie was very clear she didn't want. To her, that was a loss of quality of life, and she was out at that point. So there are so many factors that it could have contributed in addition to the grief firestorm that I've talked about quite a bit here before, where we're just dealing with the sudden loss of the body of the one that we love and all of the tangible representations that that relationship is in our life, and our entire daily routine has been turned upside down, and our body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, and our sympathetic nervous system won't shut off, and we are in grief. And then on top of that, carrying all of this trauma and all of these questions and all of this self-doubt and self-recrimination and second guessing and backseat driving and being really mean to ourselves at a time when we are incredibly vulnerable and just need comfort and empathy and support and love. And it literally, for Ellie and Nina, cut the burden, the emotional burden of going through the grief experience in half. And so that's what I mean. That's what Ellie needs when she says, for me, being invited to participate in shaping my end-of-life adventure turned it into a real adventure instead of a crisis. Crisis is also an adventure, but that's the roller coaster with all the fear and none of the fun, like we started out talking about today. We want the roller coaster and the fun. Or maybe we'd prefer a friendly float. I like tubing better than roller coaster personally, but you can't tube with no water or no inner tube. So we want the whole package. And what Ellie is highlighting here is by inviting your pet to their own end-of-life adventure conversation and story, you release the full burden that really should never be yours to begin with. You release that and you allow your pet to share what they want, what they need. You learn from them. You feel confident and competent navigating these steps. You are at peace because your pet has shared with you how they envision it going, their grand plan for their incredible end-of-life transition adventure. So you're not second-guessing yourself every step of the way because you know, and instead you have something to do, something authentic, something rooted in unconditional love, and you feel good about how you're shepherding your pet through their end-of-life experience because you're just following their wishes. You're watching for the signs that they have given you. And when that time comes, you know how they want to transition. I've had some animals that have said it's very important to me to have a natural death if at all possible. If it's not possible, I understand, but it's very important to me. I really would like to have this experience. And we cannot know until we ask. Now, often when I am given the opportunity to facilitate these types of important conversations, I discover when I'm sharing what the pet wants with their human. That human, that pet parent will then say, you know, I kind of thought they might want that. So often your intuition is there, but you're so emotionally compromised by the whole experience itself as we inevitably are. You just needed to hear it from your pet directly to really trust what you're hearing, what you're feeling, what you're sensing, what you're seeing, what you're receiving. I'm no different when it comes to my own animals. Doesn't mean I can't talk with my own animals, but in those kinds of emotionally challenging times, I too appreciate a little backup and a little help. So what Ellie's really saying is that not only did I have the grief burden for my mom and for myself, but she's saying when I got to the spirit side, the etheric realm, however you like to think of that, the recalibrated frequency where I'm in my electromagnetic energetic body rather than this physical spacesuit, I didn't have to go through the full cleansing protocol that the animals have shared with me happens for animals that arrive back home in their light bodies and they are carrying the energetic vestiges of trauma, of a lot of physical pain, of a lot of emotional pain, of maybe an emergency situation that prompted them to leave their body. And of course, they don't hang on to that very long. Animals that do cross and they've had perhaps more of a lengthy or lingering illness or something that hasn't resolved, that it has placed them more in the palliative care route to hospice and then transition. What they show me looks like an old school tanning bed, if you ever went to those back in the day, where they are just completely enveloped in healing light. And all of those vestiges of energetic trauma memory, trauma imprint, if you will, are transmuted. We know from Einstein's theory of relativity that energy can never be created nor destroyed, but it can be transmuted and transformed. And that's what this light spa does from what the animals have shown me is that it transmutes and transforms those lower vibration frequencies, those fragments or imprints of memories of trauma and pain, whether physical, mental, emotional, they're transmuted and transformed and reintegrated into the fullness of the light being. But Ellie's saying, you know, I got to skip that part. Every animal goes through it. Every human goes through it. We all need some of that. She's saying, I was able to pass very quickly through that because we skipped the trauma part where it was a health crisis that prompted the need for me to either have an assisted passing through euthanasia or I passed naturally, but it was in the midst of a crisis. Instead, it was peaceful and it was beautiful and it was perfect. It was perfect. I couldn't have orchestrated it better because I orchestrated it myself. And that's really where I want to leave you today with so much gratitude to Ellie and her mom, Nina, for permission to share their story first and foremost, for everything that I've learned and all the learning I've had prior that's just been reinforced through the privilege of walking this beautiful cat and her mom through their end-of-life adventure story together. And little spoiler alert, of course, I may not have updates for you for some time, but Ellie was already making rumblings about pet reincarnation. And I let Nina know that. I said, I know we're probably not on that wavelength right now, but as you move through this experience, just know that that door is open and we may want to have a conversation about that at some point in the future. But for you who are listening today, whether your pet's end-of-life transition is just a gleam in the eye, maybe you've just brought home a very young pet and you are looking forward to many years or even decades of adventures together. Perhaps you're listening today and your pet is in their prime adult years. Maybe your pet is in their golden years that sometimes look golden and sometimes don't look so golden, right? Maybe you're listening today and your pet is throwing up some signs, is giving you little inklings of the transition still to come. Or maybe you're listening today and that freight train is blowing its horn in the distance and you can hear it coming. And what I want you to know, regardless of where your circumstances and your inner species family situation find you today, I want you to know that this option is out there. I want you to know that it exists. That's really my whole goal for sharing this episode with you today and for asking Nina for permission to share her story with Ellie, is because I want you to know that when this time comes, knowing that it's one of the certainties, whether this is something that you have a legacy pet who will outlive you, and you want to have the conversation and write it into the trust that you create for them and into your last will and testament for their guardian and their executor, or whether it's something that you want or feel like you need to have more urgently, or even right now, I want you to know that the option is there and that it works. And Ellie's story is a beautiful, perfect example of how well it can work. And in Ellie's own words, transform what could have been a traumatic end-of-life transition into a true end-of-life adventure. So if you need support with that, if you need help with that, you know where to find me. All my information is in the show notes. And if this episode has been supportive to you and your interspecies family, please do take a moment to leave a review, to share a comment, to let me know. It always inspires me to hear from you and lets me know that I am on the right track in terms of the episodes I invest my time and energy into preparing for you. And most importantly, if you have a request or a question about anything that I covered in today's episode, please do drop a comment and let me know because it helps shape future content here at Let's Talk to Animals that we can enjoy and explore together. So until next time, I send you and your pet family all my pubs. Okay, bye for now. I have so enjoyed sharing this episode with you. If you're new to the Let's Talk to Animals community and you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review on your favorite streaming service or drop a comment wherever you'd like to listen. I love to hear from you, and your feedback truly helps me shape future episodes based on your interests and needs. If you're not already in my weekly love letters community, head over to Animal Love Languages.com to opt in. Your welcome email will include$25 off your first pet session with me, and you'll be the first to know when a new podcast episode drops. If you're interested in learning more about the work I do communicating with animals, offering pet Reiki, and teaching animal communication, please visit me at animal lovelanguages.com. Click on Schedule for Pet Sessions and Programs for all the information about my new animal communication adventure to master your student program and the live animal communication practice circle I run for student practitioners. And I look forward to welcoming you back here very soon for a fresh new episode of Let's Talk to Animals. Okay, all my love. Bye for now.