The Girl Who Healed Animals At The Pet Cemetery

I grew up in Germany. My dad, coming from an extremely poor background, worked his hands to the bones to provide a roof over our heads and food on the table. Mom and dad married when she was only 19 and we lived in a house built beside my grandfather’s on a small farm.

My maternal grandfather was a pharmacist and had bought the land on the hill, where he built his house after he came back from the war. He had been imprisoned in France. Times were hard, but the land my grandfather was able to purchase the land at a low price. It was the last lot on the hill, before the heavily forested area, and it was an old pet cemetery, which was unknown at the time.

Around the time I went to high school, I started finding injured animals. Or maybe they found me? The first was a black bird with a broken wing. I brought her home and named her Raven. I learned how to feed her, and how to stabilize the wing so it could heal.

The next animal was a mouse. She had a bloody foot and was almost frozen to the ground. She was barely alive and seemed relieved as I picked her up and carried her home. I put her in a terrarium I had inherited from my brother, after he had used it for his ‘frog project’ in school. His 143 tadpoles turned into frogs all over the backyard, and mom was livid! Thanks for my Dad, they all moved to a pond.

My next surprise guest was a black cat. I came home from soccer practice and there he was, sitting on my desk in my room. It was a problem, because mom did not want any pets in the house! Period. I could hide the small animals, but what to do with a big, black cat?

I begged my parents to let me keep Fritzi. He was like a dog. He followed me wherever I went. My family voted for Fritzi to stay, on mom’s condition that he sleep on the porch. But, of course, Fritzi the black cat slept on my pillow instead. Sadly he was killed after a few months, when I called him for lunch and a car ran him over. I was devastated. Heartbroken.

Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty ~ Albert Einstein

Two days later, my dad’s best friend called and asked if we could take care of his cat. It would have to be put it down if he would not find a place for it before New Year’s eve. Eddie, turned out to be a 8-week-old black kitten, found in a cattle barn with a hernia on his right side. Well, there would be no Christmas money or gifts for me that year. But I did not care, as long as little Eddie was doing fine.

Two weeks later, a grey tabby cat joined the club and was soon named Mad Max, because he was as hectic as Mad Max. Always on a mission! I could not handle him without gloves. Over the years, it became evident that all my dogs and cats would be kind of ‘special’ in many weird and wonderful ways.

Another six weeks later, the wife of my dad’s employee came by with a red tabby kitten, eyes barely open, in a box. She found him at the vet to be euthanized and asked if I would be up to the task of bottle feeding him? Every two hours. Kuno slept in my sweater, which was tucked into my pants, to keep him warm. I could hear him or feel him scratching for his next meal.

Kuno later decided to sleep in my brother’s room, who doesn’t like pets at all! Like they say, dogs have masters, cats have servants. Kuno was not phased in any kind of way of my brother’s ‘dislike’ for pesky pets, and soon even slept on his lap while he was doing homework.

So, despite not being allowed to have pets, according to my mother, the animals kept coming to find healing, and then went on their merry way, or died of old age at our home. It was as if the animals somehow found their way to our home, as if they were drawn to the energy there. More and more were beginning to show up at our door.

And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, they who partake of benefits which are gotten by wronging one of God’s creatures, cannot be righteous; nor can they touch holy things, or teach the mysteries of the kingdom ~ The Gospel of the Holy Twelve

By the time I was a teenager, my parents built an extension to our home, as well as a large building for dad’s growing company. The day the builders came and tore down the old wooden workshop on the land, was when the ‘animal attraction’ suddenly made sense!

They started digging a foundation for the new workshop. The ground was almost solid clay. Nothing buried in that soil, would ever properly decay. Soon they started digging up mummified skeletons of all kinds of animals: dogs, cats, birds and even a horse with almost its full hide intact.

There is no official explanation for it. I tried over many years to find the full backstory, but I was never successful in discovering the truth. It is said that a healer lived on our land centuries ago, and that she helped animals to recover, or give them a proper burial.

When I moved out, no more animals showed up wounded or sick at my mother’s house. I also never experienced anything like it again in my life, that so many animals would approach me for help so frequently and persistently. What I still experience these days is that all my hospice adoptions outlive their prognosis by one or two years. My vet is always asking me about my ‘secret’ for keeping them alive for so long, and I just smile and say, “Just some TLC, and a lot of it.”