An animal reiki healing journey does not always begin in a classroom or a course. Sometimes it begins at a doorstep, on a cold winter night, with two small hungry cats who have already decided that your life is about to change. This is the story of Amadeus, the cat who introduced me to Reiki, led me to my teachers, and showed me through the art of his living and dying what it truly means to heal.

— Indrani Das (Idee), Artemis Animal Healing

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Remembering Amadeus: A Cat Who Initiated Me Into Animal Reiki Healing

The Cat Who Adopted Me

Amadeus arrived without asking permission, which was, in retrospect, entirely on brand for him.

He and his sibling Artemis appeared together on my doorstep one cold winter evening, thin and loud and absolutely certain that I was the human they had chosen. You do not say no to a pair of starving kittens. And so our life together began.

What followed were years of broken vases, shredded sofas, torn curtains, and the gradual replacement of my Iron Maiden collection with Beethoven and Mozart, a transition that all three of us found vastly more satisfying. After considerable deliberation across names that included Bertrand Russell, Apollo, and Odin, we arrived at Amadeus, and it fit him like a glove.

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How Amadeus Brought Me to Reiki

The dark hour came in 2010, when we lost Artemis.

Amadeus collapsed inward after her passing. He stopped eating, stopped drinking, stopped sleeping. The vet was frank with me: his chances of survival were slim. I was desperate in the way that only grief and helplessness together can make a person desperate.

One morning, almost by accident, I came across a small advertisement in the newspaper from someone who offered Reiki for animals. I had heard the word Reiki in passing and understood almost nothing about it. But Amadeus was fading and I had run out of other ideas, so we went.

Within thirty minutes of that first session, Amadeus relaxed in a way I had not seen since Artemis died. He went off to sleep and slept deeply for more than twelve hours. When he woke, he was recognizably himself again, alert and present and hungry. I sat there watching him eat and felt something shift in me that I have no clinical language for.

That session led me to my first Reiki teacher and mentor, Priya Rajagopalan. And that introduction, orchestrated entirely by a grieving cat who had read an advertisement I almost missed, was how my animal reiki healing journey began.

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What Amadeus Actually Taught Me About Reiki

For all that he initiated me into Reiki, Amadeus himself had very little interest in receiving it from me.

Every time I attempted to practice on him in those early years, he would stand up, give me a long look, and walk out of the room. I found this both humbling and baffling. It took me a long time to understand what he was doing.

He was teaching me that Reiki is a state of being, not a technique to perform. He would sit beside me for hours in absolute stillness, watching the sky, doing what appeared to be nothing, and I gradually understood that this was the lesson. The healing space is not created by doing. It is created by becoming still enough that the energy can move through you without your ego getting in the way. Amadeus, in his magnificent feline way, was showing me the art of Animal Reiki from the inside out.

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Wild Reiki, Shamanism, and the Final Teaching

When Amadeus was diagnosed with cancer, a form caused by the chemicals used in vaccines, he did something characteristic of him: he used the crisis to initiate another chapter.

He led me, in the way that animals lead us when we are paying attention, to my next teacher: Rose De Dan, the founder of Wild Reiki and Shamanic Healing, a woman who worked at the intersection of Reiki and shamanic practice and who happened to be, naturally, a cat person. Rose held the energetic space for Amadeus throughout his illness. Alongside her support, homeopathy replaced conventional painkillers, and the combination allowed Amadeus to live his final months in genuine comfort.

He kept jumping onto kitchen counters. He kept sitting in the sun and holding extended conversations with the birds and the neighbourhood cats who came by the window. He was, until close to the very end, fully and gleefully himself. And through energy healing and the deep attunement that had grown between us, he was also able to communicate when he was ready to go.

His transition was sacred. There is no other word for it.

A few days afterward, walking to work under an open blue sky, I felt words arrive that I knew were from him:

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“Beloved, why do you mourn this illusory loss? Watch the blue skies and you will see me. Listen to the silence and you will hear me. Know the rainbow lights and you will know me. As you always have, so many times before.”

— Amadeus

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Amadeus did not just change my life. He built it. Every teacher I found, every modality I learned, every animal I have supported since, traces a line back to that cold winter doorstep and the small hungry cat who decided I needed educating.

I am grateful every day that he chose me.

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You may also enjoy reading:

• Let the Animals Teach Us the Reiki Precepts
• 12 Steps to Cope with Loss of a Beloved Animal Companion
• Communicate with Animals at Rainbow Bridge