By Ken Hoffman
Sonya Fitzpatrick can talk a cat out of a tree — and it doesn’t matter if she’s home in The Woodlands and the scaredy cat is in Sydney, Australia.
Fitzpatrick can talk common sense into squabbling squabs. She can reason with rattlesnakes. She can figure out what’s agitating an alligator.
More important, she can get your cat to cheer up or your pooch Scruffy to stop piddling when friends come over to your house.
Fitzpatrick can talk to the animals.
Humans? At least in one case — programming executives at cable’s Animal Planet — she can’t get them to return a phone call.
Fitzpatrick’s pilot show, Pet Psychic Encounters, aired last week on Animal Planet, and Fitzpatrick hasn’t heard a word from the network on whether the show will be picked up as a series.
“Humans don’t communicate very well,” Fitzpatrick said. “I guess I will hear from them … when I hear from them. I do know that they’ve had a tremendous response to my show.”
Fitzpatrick was born in England and knew from early childhood that she had “the gift” of communicating with animals. She said, “I was born with one foot in the spirit world. I thought everybody was like me: They could communicate with animals.”
Now she lives in The Woodlands — she was sitting on her bed with three dogs and five cats while talking to this human. She has an international business counseling troubled animals and their concerned owners.
She does most of her work over the phone. She will ask what’s troubling your cat, dog, bear, goat, lion, llama or anything else on Old McDonald’s Farm. Each 30-minute session costs $300. For more information and scheduling, click on www.sonyafitzpatrick.com.
No, you don’t hold the phone up to Muffin’s ear. Fitzpatrick talks to you, Mr. or Mrs. Human, for a few minutes, then communicates telepathically with the animal. “Animals communicate on a higher level than people do. Animals are very spiritual.”
Animals, telepathically.
People, telephonically. Long-distance rates apply.
If you saw the Pet Psychic Encounters pilot, you watched her get a Chihuahua to stop nipping its owners’ feet, especially the young boy in the family. This was one mean pup. By the end of the show, the dog was jumping in the kid’s lap and letting him rub its stomach.
Then there was the cat who suddenly started urinating all over the house. Fitzpatrick got to the bottom of the problem. The cat was upset because the owners (Fitzpatrick always refers to a pet’s human owners as “companions”) moved its blue litter box.
She once talked a despondent alligator out of the water at Gatorland in Florida. Seems Pops the Alligator didn’t want to do his trick — rolling over on his back — for the tourists in Bermuda shorts and black socks. Fitzpatrick had Pops spinning like a top after one session.
In addition to her TV pilot, Fitzpatrick hosts a show called Animal Intuition from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays on Sirius Satellite Radio. It’s a call-in show.
Five thousand people call in each week. It’s the No. 1 call-in show on Sirius.
Oh, Fitzpatrick talks to dead animals, too. Fitzpatrick calls them “animals who have passed over.”
If you’d like to say, “I loved you” one last time to your dear, departed dachshund, that’s $300, too.
There was a movie, All Dogs Go to Heaven.
I asked, is that true?. And, if so, is it the same Heaven that good people go to?
“Yes, dogs and animals do go to Heaven. And it’s the same Heaven as people.”
OK, what about bad animals and bad people? Do they share the same Hell?
She said, “To be honest, I think Hell is right here on Earth.”