Can You Communicate with Animals? My Experience with Animal Communication

Years ago, I came across the video below of animal communicator Anna Breytenbach in conversation with a black panther. The video hit me deeply.

Even now, when I watch it again, it still moves me. It brings me back to something I already felt as a child: the desire to talk to animals and to understand what is going on within them.

As a child, I would playfully have little conversations with my guinea pig, Mottie. She would squeak back, and I would imagine what it meant. My imagination was vivid enough, but at the same time I never truly felt that I was really communicating with animals.

That experience of truly communicating with animals came much later.

My cat Pica went missing for a few weeks, just before I was about to move house. During that time, she was constantly on my mind. In the evenings, I would walk through the streets, shaking a can of food, and I kept stopping at the same garden gate near my home. I had a strong feeling that Pica was somewhere in that area, but I couldn’t find her.

As the move came closer, it started to feel like a now-or-never moment. I felt desperate and decided to fully focus on her. In my thoughts, I sent her a clear message: that she really had to come out that evening, otherwise it would be too late. To my great surprise, I ran into her that very same evening, near that exact garden gate.

To me, it felt like something had happened. As if she had picked up my message and as if I, without realizing it, had been sensing her presence all along.

From that moment on, the subject of animal communication never left me. If this was what I would call “telepathy,” then surely it was something that could be developed. The message I kept encountering from animal communicators was remarkably consistent: this form of communication is something ancient, something that is still natural in many indigenous cultures. Anyone can learn it. Not because it is something special, but because it is an ability we have forgotten and can rediscover through practice.

This resonated deeply with me. It reminded me of how I look at drawing: I truly believe that anyone can learn to draw. Of course, there are differences in natural ability, but not everyone needs to become a professional artist to be able to do it.

With that in mind, I bought the book Animal Talk by Penelope Smith. The method appealed to me, and I gained a good understanding of it. What was missing, however, was experience, and above all, the confidence that it really worked.

Because how do you know that what you receive isn’t just coming from your own mind? Am I doing this right? Is what I’m perceiving accurate, or am I, just like I did as a child with my guinea pig, filling things in myself? In short, I realized I needed guidance.

Not long after, I spoke to someone who told me she was going to take a workshop in animal communication with Patricia Dancer of Life in Delft. Since Delft is close to where I live, it felt like a natural next step, and I signed up.

Patricia works with small groups and uses photos of participants’ pets to practice with. This makes the experience immediately personal and tangible. The owner of the animal can often confirm whether the information is accurate, and it happens regularly that what participants perceive is so precise that it visibly moves the owner.

What surprised me perhaps even more was that participants, each in their own way, often picked up the same information. One person might receive a feeling, another an image, and another words, but together it would form a coherent whole. As if we were all putting together pieces of the same puzzle. That way of working together was perhaps the most beautiful part of all.

Over the past year, I have continued to join Patricia’s practice group on a monthly basis, together with several other participants. There, the communication expanded further; not only with animals, but also with plants and trees in nature. Especially those experiences left a deep impression on me.

One of the sessions that has stayed with me the most involved a cat named Swiebertje, belonging to one of the participants. At that time, he was doing very poorly. His owner was not present, as his condition was rapidly declining.

We decided to connect with him to sense how he was doing. What stood out was that, independently from one another, we all perceived the same thing: a deep sense of sadness. It felt as if he was struggling with letting go of his owners.

The intensity of that feeling was so strong that Patricia suggested we do a guided meditation together to help him. In that visualization, we supported the cat in letting go. Everyone experienced this process in their own way, yet there were clear similarities. Personally, I felt as if I could sense him releasing, as if he was rising and the world below him was becoming smaller. It felt so real that I found it difficult to see it as mere imagination. About fifteen minutes later, we received a message that the cat had passed away shortly after the session.

We were silent.

None of the sessions -as special as they all were- made such a deep impression on me as this one.

If reading this touches you or sparks your curiosity, I can only encourage you to explore this for yourself. Developing this way of communicating brings a sense of wonder, depth, and connection. It opens up a different way of seeing; animals, nature, and perhaps also yourself.

For me, it has truly enriched my life. And above all, it has brought something that has become increasingly important to me: respect.
Respect for the wisdom of nature, and for a layer of reality that we often overlook.