“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Our cat, Rooney, died a week ago, as described at the beginning of the 638th session. This material is included because many correspondents have asked us about the roles pets can play in family groups and their belief systems. Seth’s data proved to be unexpectedly penetrating and intimate — so much so that what follows is edited to some degree. Enough remains, however, to show that such relationships can be complicated indeed.)

Give us a moment… The cat would have died that winter. In your terms it was a probable death. In a part of his reality he did die that winter. In your reality, you kept him alive. He had been closed up in that house over there, and went wild and terrified.

Ruburt was somewhat afraid of the cat, considering him wild and caged originally, as his own mother had been in his interpretation. Ruburt therefore felt obligated to help Rooney, who did not really have any love for him — just as in his earlier years he [Jane] had felt obligated to help his mother.

The cat was aware of this in its terms. It became heavy like Ruburt’s mother, but no longer threatening. You finally had it fixed. If Ruburt’s mother had been unable to bear a child, then Ruburt would have had a different mother and a different background, granting that Ruburt had come alive.

The cat was a male. You and Ruburt originally called it Katherine, however, when it was still a kitten, and before you finally succeeded in coaxing it into your house. Rooney got into neighborhood scrapes, as Ruburt’s father did in bars in various parts of the country. The cat knew of the identification but was willing to trade this for several years of additional physical life, in which he also learned to relate to gentleness for the first time.

Rooney even learned to be on terms with another cat; Willy, your older cat, in his way served as mentor.

Ruburt’s mother was very much afraid of cats, particularly black ones. Now and then Rooney and Ruburt passed symptoms back and forth. The cat was not a passive receptor, however, and also learned from his encounters with your neighbor downstairs (who also has a cat). Many of Ruburt’s feelings about his mother are buried in Rooney’s grave. Rooney, though, is free of a distrust that he had carried with him this time, having to do with his background in that house across the way, and was grateful for those additional years you gave him.