by Brenda Fullick with Morgine Jurdan, Julie Soquet, Karen Craft, Jerome Siegel, and Karen Taylor from the archive of Species Link, The Journal of Interspecies Telepathic Communication, Issue 53 Winter 2004 Some of us sleep sort of accidentally, almost for lack of being awake.
Take dogs, for instance. They’re often willing to forfeit sleep for anything in the waking world that’s even remotely interesting.
Or consider humans. How many people will struggle valiantly to stay awake until the end of their favorite talk show?
Yet the feline members of our families bring a professional craftsmanship to the art of premeditated slumber. Even a catnap can make a hard windowsill look like the coziest spot in the house. A cat’s truest, deepest sleep is ardent, purposeful, intense.
Communicator Morgine Jurdan of Amboy, Washington, finds that of all the animals she’s attempted to talk with—in more than 7,000 consultations, over the course of a decade—cats are the only ones who occasionally don’t respond. “I know that cats dream a lot, and quite intensely,” Morgine says. “Sometimes they’re actually in another place. You can’t even connect with them.”
Just exactly where are these sleep aficionados going when they close their eyes? What is it they’re doing in their dreams?
Domestic Sphinxes There appears to be a distinction between a cat’s restorative sleep and the sitting catnap that is actually more of a working meditation.
“I really am completely convinced that animals, cats in particular, do a kind of meditation that has to do with refining the space that they’re in,” says animal communicator Julie Soquet of Hinesburg, Vermont. She and others find that if a home has had a lot of emotional upset, cats will position themselves in the vortex of that energy and try to clear it. Often cats will do this resting upright on their stomachs, legs tucked under.
Communicator Karen Craft of Ames, Iowa, asked her cat Misha what he’s doing when he sits in the sphinx pose.
“Mostly, we [my brother Connery and I] commune with the Sunlight and weave its living energy into healing,” Misha answered. When Karen asked who the healing was for, Misha replied, “For our family, ourselves, everybody!”
Cats who sit like little Egyptian monuments, paws tucked, are in fact meditating.
A great deal of sleep research has been done on cats because they’re such good sleepers, says researcher Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. He’s also chief of neurobiology research at the Sepulveda VA Medical Center.
Siegel isn’t quite willing to admit that cats are capable of dreaming. “We know they have behavior that looks similar to behavior that humans have when they’re dreaming.” He also says that an electro-encephalogram reading of a cat’s brain activity while in the sphinx pose is “exactly analogous” to the EEG reading of a human in meditation. The Mysteries of REM across Species Despite all the talk in contemporary culture about the restorative value of REM sleep, scientists don’t yet know how it works or what it does. Many researchers speculate that this rapid-eye movement sleep improves neurons in the brain by making them more elastic. Others theorize that it’s a time when random associations are cleared away, making space in the hard drive for new learning.
One thing they do know for certain is that different animal species spend very different amounts of time in REM sleep. In research conducted so far, the animal spending the most time in REM sleep is the platypus, which logs nearly eight hours every day.
UCLA sleep researcher Jerome Siegel—who has the distinction of being the only scientist to have studied platypus sleep patterns—suggests that the large periods of time they spend in REM sleep may have something to do with their relatively small brain cortexes.
Siegel sees a sort of intellectual continuum between the heaviest REM sleepers (like platypuses) and the lightest (whales and dolphins). One research team studying captive dolphins was unable to measure any REM sleep at all. However, Siegel pulls back from the theory correlating REM sleep time and intelligence because, on the REM continuum, humans fall somewhere in the middle.
Average time per day spent in REM sleep:
Thick-tailed opossums, 6.6 hours
Giant armadillos, 6 hours.
Black-footed ferrets, 6 hours.
Big brown bats, 3.9 hours.
European hedgehogs, 3.5 hours.
Domestic cats, 3.2 hours.
Golden hamsters, 3.1 hours.
Long-nosed armadillos, 3 hours.
Ground squirrels, 3 hours.
Humans, 1.9 hours.
Owl monkeys, 1.8 hours.
Elephants, 1.8 hours.
Chimpanzees, 1.4 hours.
Baboons, 1 hour.
Guinea pigs, less than 1 hour.
Horses, less than 1 hour.
Cattle, less than one hour.
Giraffes, less than 30 minutes.
Dolphins, less than 30 minutes.
Whales, a few minutes.
Researchers have noticed that the animals who are born relatively immature, helpless and dependent on their mothers—including platypuses and humans—tend to spend a lot of time in REM sleep as babies. As these infants grow, the time they spend in REM sleep drops off. However, they never quite catch up with the low-REM animals like giraffes and whales, who are comparably self-sufficient soon after they’re born..
Researchers know that most sleep-deprived animals, including cats, will fall into a REM cycle as soon as they get a chance. Sleep-deprived humans, on the other hand, cannot enjoy deep REM sleep until they’ve spent some time in non-REM sleep.
Scientists are at a loss to understand the difference. But Morgine’s feline friend, K.C., says that sleep is just harder for humans.
“People take time to relax and go to sleep,” K.C. explains. “They are restless, and their bodies suffer from the stresses of life, different foods and chemicals that go into your bodies and things like this. I sleep more soundly and deeper and have more dreaming time than many humans.”
K.C. reports that animals rarely have nightmares, unless they’re caused by a physical illness, a mental problem or severe abuse.
“Normally our dreams are more creative and fun. I can climb a big mountain and meet all sorts of animals and people and have fun, pretend [to be] dying, explore and catch beings ten times my size, and so on. So I am able to enjoy the process of dreaming at a different level than humans. I am not saying humans do not do this; just generally speaking, their dreams are not as exciting and creative as mine are.”
Going Places Sometimes dreaming cats visit the future, or the past.
“I dream of little fluttery things like the moth I once was, fluttering high in the forest canopy,” Misha tells Karen in Ames. “Sometimes I dream of my life as the monkey who gave his body to create sacred objects for the Andean shaman.”
This is Misha’s first lifetime as a cat, Karen says, and he’s spent a lot of time pining for a life of flight. She has worked to convince him that there are things to savor about life as a cat.
Some animals enjoy reliving past lives, but most cats tend to be more focused on the present, K.C. tells Morgine.
“I can see into the future and visit that place on rare occasions,” K.C. says. She says that sometimes, she needs to visit the future because there’s something that she needs to know about and prepare for. But “it is usually not something I do a lot. I am completely happy being surprised by life.”
Besides, there’s plenty to enjoy by simply experiencing the dreamtime. “There are times when we go into other dimensions and visit places you never see,” K.C. divulges. “We do work there, we have fun there, we meet friends, we play, we create, we explore….
“There are many ways you [humans] can go in dreams with us, and that we actually share dreams with people. [However], there are also places we visit that you could not follow us, for you would not have a frame of reference in which to experience and enjoy it.”
Visualize Perfection Human athletes can improve their games simply by relaxing and visualizing themselves hitting the perfect tennis serve, or executing the perfect golf swing. Cats also report visualizing while they sleep.
“I dream of hunting rituals,” Connery tells his friend Karen in Ames. “I feel my tiger muscles, claws and fangs as I bless my prey with love/gratitude. Even if it’s ‘only’ a mouse.”
“I can learn things in my dreams, as you can,” K.C. tells Morgine. “I even practice being a hunter, for instance, to sharpen my skills. I can remember things. I can figure things out for myself if I am confused. In that way we are similar.”
But more than improving themselves, cats talk about improving the world around them while they dream. Communicator Karen Taylor of Santa Fe, New Mexico, interviewed her cat Abbey on the subject. “I can’t speak for the whole cat population,” Abbey cautioned, but personally, she is involved in a “collective healing of the Earth and its people.”
Theoretically, Abbey says, a cat’s human friends could join in this collective healing circle if they’re up to the challenge.
“Those beings who choose to work together in dreamtime do so as part of their agreement,” Abbey told Karen. “It does not matter whether they’re in human or animal form in their awake time. However, I will say that perhaps those who have chosen to have a cat experience have the advantage to do more work, as they spend much more time in dreamtime than most other beings.” “We can assist our people in their lives in the dream state,” K.C. explains. “Here we can communicate more clearly than in the daytime state of consciousness. We can work on healing and helping someone learn to take care of themselves, learn things in school, improve their body. It is really limitless.” Healing the Healers If cats work to heal humans and the planet, then who is left to heal the cats?
Julie Soquet embarked on two shamanic journeys to learn about cat dreams. What she learned would not show up on any scientist’s EEG readings.
Julie first visited a Council of Cats, “which is in essence the overarching soul, base of wisdom and connection/guardian of the cat kingdom,” she explained. The council is for domesticated cats, who face complicated issues and challenges as individuals.
“A most regal, majestic, compassionate and wise energy greeted me,” Julie relates. “There was a sense of natural hierarchy, of [a] leader surrounded by elders of eons. The leader cat, which felt to be of the panther family, said that many cats, and all of the master cats, come here in their dreamtime to restore themselves and to remember their roles on the earth plane. Furthermore, they are given teachings and blessings to take these energies to their earth situations.
“Cats guard and restore the psychic energy of the people and place around them,” Julie explains. “They also are given assignments to assist in the healing and awakening of specific beings and places on the Earth. This connection is crucial to the well-being of our cat friends and companions. No wonder our cat friends spend so much of their time in the dreamworld!”
Julie’s cat, Chia, regularly visits the Council of Cats in her ongoing work to help Julie and improve her skills as an animal communicator and shamanic healer. But Chia sometimes has dreamtime experiences that are even more special.
According to Julie, Chia is one of the cats representing all domestic felines at the Council of All Species, “which is a gathering of representatives of all species on the planet at this time. The leaders of this council are the whales, as they hold some of the oldest and most profound knowledge.
“The whales are mentoring many other species to hold this leadership role as well,” Julie explains. “Cats are among those being mentored for holding a web of light to help connect all beings. This light is also meant to help people remember and see their own brilliance.
Sometimes Chia finds an out-of-the-way place to sleep where Julie won’t disturb her so she’ll have a long, uninterrupted visit to the Council of All Species.
Julie says that winter, the natural season of hibernation and dreams, is an excellent time to visit.
