Hi, I'm Ms. Katy

I'm an animal communicator. Some people call this work pet psychic. Some call it animal communication. Some don't have a name for it. I think of it as quiet listening.

How I started listening

I grew up in Indiana. Our house was full of animals.

My dad brought Cocoa home when I was six. She was a brown mutt. She was my first dog. We also had barn cats nobody officially owned. We had a beagle named Roy for a few years.

I was the kid who sat on the floor with whoever's dog was visiting. My mother used to leave me in a corner with somebody's anxious chihuahua at parties. The dog would settle. I'd be quiet for an hour. Everyone was happier for it.

I started noticing things young. I'd know something about an animal I had no way of knowing.

In high school, my next-door neighbor Ana found a lost dog wandering our neighborhood. When I crouched down next to him, I got the sense he'd spent a long time outside before being found. I also got that he had grown up with a cat. Ana found the owner through the dog's microchip. The owner told her the dog had escaped through a hole under the fence three weeks earlier, and that they also owned a cat.

A few years later, a friend's golden retriever started acting strange around her. He'd hesitate before coming up to her. He'd sniff her hand for a long time before settling. She thought he was getting sick. I sat with the dog. What I got was that he didn't recognize her smell. I asked her if she'd changed anything — soap, lotion, perfume. She'd just switched to a new shampoo a few weeks earlier. She went back to the old one. The dog was fine again within a week.

I didn't have language for any of this. I just knew it.

How this became the work

I worked as a librarian for most of my adult life. Books, animals, quiet rooms. Those are my three things.

I did readings on the side. For friends. For friends of friends. It was a thing I did. Not a job I had.

About ten years ago, a friend asked me to read for her coworker Priya. Priya's senior dog had passed a couple of months earlier. I sat with the photo for an hour. I wrote down what came through. I sent it.

Priya wrote back the next day. Three of the things in what I'd sent landed hard. I'd written about a small white plush toy he used to carry around. I'd written about how he liked to nudge her left hand specifically when he wanted her attention. And I'd written about a feeling he wanted her to know — that she'd been a good home, and that he wasn't carrying anything heavy, and that he wanted her to put her own heaviness down too. Priya said she'd sat in her car and cried for half an hour after reading it.

That was the moment I realized this was something I should be offering.

Where I am now

The black dog in these photos is Raven. He was my soul dog. I got him from the county shelter when he was five. He stayed with me for ten more years. He passed peacefully at home next to me. He still comes around in dreams sometimes. He always looks well.

I live in Florida now with my husband Craig and our two animals. Henry is a senior shepherd mix. Pearl is a tortoiseshell cat. Henry is mostly retired from having opinions. Pearl has many.

I do this work full time now. I read for friends and family, and for people I've never met who write in. If you're here, I'm glad. Whether you order a reading or not, I hope you go back to your pet today and tell them they're a good one.

— Ms. Katy