Cats on Her Mind

In a town loaded with trance channelers, hug therapists and past-life regressionists, a woman who talks to cats is no big deal.

I once knew a bartender in Hollywood who talked to God. He was the object of derision until a lawyer who lived next door claimed to have heard God answer.

Now half of Hollywood talks to God.

The woman who communicates with animals is Carol Gurney, a perky ex-ad agency executive who left New York for Los Angeles and almost instantly began to perceive the L.A. mystique.

Something happens to New Yorkers when they move west. Their psyches, battered by the calamity that attends a dying city, restore themselves in aberrant forms.

They get into things like cosmic synergy and helioscience curing, finally ending up as members of the Kriya Jyoti Tantra Society and the Producers Guild of America.

In Carol Gurney’s case, she quit the corporate world and began communicating with animals, which, I suppose, is not dissimilar from communicating with store clerks who have just moved to this country from Kyoto.

When I learned of Gurney’s facility for talking to quadrupeds, I dropped by her home in Agoura Hills and asked if she would demonstrate her skills.

She said she would if I didn’t make fun of her. “I’m serious about this,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.

I have a tendency to drool when someone looks me straight in the eye, which in turn causes me to dab nervously at the corners of my mouth.

“There are a lot of kooks in L.A. and I’m not one of them,” Carol said. “I’m no airy fairy.”

I’ve got to admit she doesn’t look like an airy fairy. She’s an attractive woman in her 30s with a tendency to bounce when she talks, not unlike a cheerleader whose motor has never stopped running.

She became interested in animal communication because of her cat, Soleil, which means sun in French. There was nothing sunny about the cat’s nature, however. It would hiss and strike out when anyone tried to pet it, which naturally upset Carol. No one wants a hostile cat.

She had heard about a woman who communicated with animals and, while skeptical, figured it was worth a try. The woman’s name was Penelope Smith.

“Soleil told Penelope that she had been hurt as a baby, and when people tried to touch her it brought back the memory of pain,” Carol said.

I said “Really?” and rubbed nervously at the edges of my mouth.

“Penelope convinced Soleil no one was trying to hurt her and by the end of the evening everything was fine. My friends couldn’t believe it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Naturally I was intrigued.”

Carol became a protege of Penelope and learned, among other achievements, how to “still her mind,” a process by which one empties one’s head of what Carol calls “chattery things” in order to receive outside communiques.

You have to do the same thing to talk to God.

“It’s not a gift,” Gurney said. “Anyone can do it. Kids are always saying, ‘The dog talked to me.’ ”

Not my kids.

Carol made no effort to contact animals until one day she found it necessary to have words with her horse, Tallanny, over his sudden bad behavior.

Tallanny and an unnamed mare were being transported in a two-horse trailer when Tallanny suddenly went crazy. Carol decided to quiet her mind and ask Tallanny what was going on.

The communication is nonverbal, like a Vulcan mind meld.

“To my surprise, Tallanny answered! “ Carol said brightly. “He told me that the mare had called him stupid. That just blew his mind.”

“I should say.”

The incident so affected Carol that a year ago she went into the animal-communications biz full time. She’ll talk to your pet for $45 an hour.

“Can you talk to Soleil for me?” I asked.

The cat had jumped on the couch next to her. Carol closed her eyes, stilled her mind and went to work. A grandfather clock ticked in the background. I dabbed at the corners of my mouth and waited.

Carol opened her eyes.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“I told her what you were doing and she was glad something was being written about her,” Carol said.

I was tempted to still my mind and tell Soleil she was welcome, but then I thought to hell with it, I’d rather go home and communicate with a martini.

The cat was glaring when I left, but the martini said “Drink me” in a teeny-tiny voice, and I did.