SEBRING - What is going through your cat's head just as it gets ready to jump on the kitchen counter? Why does it do it? Is it looking for food - or attention? Does your dog really know you love it like a best friend? Do you really treat it like a member of the family?

Getting inside their pets' minds is just what Lee and Robin Taylor Corbridge did recently when their entourage of animals were visited by< Animal Planet's pet psychic Sonya Fitzpatrick. The stories of Romeo and Cindy, the Corbridges pet cougars, will air sometime in January during two episodes of The Pet Psychic. Some of their domestic pets will also

Fitzpatrick's unique ability to communicate with all creatures great and small
has brought her international attention as the premiere animal communicator.
The new episodes being filmed for the second season will feature Fitzpatrick
traveling the country, visiting animals at shelters and refuges, as well as in
private homes and entertainment venues.

Robin has been a fan of the show since its inception last year. In fact, she
immediately sat down at the computer and e-mailed Fitzpatrick about her
cougars - specifically Romeo. "I wrote that if Sonya was ever in the area, I'd
love to have her here for a visit. The Animal Planet producer said he kept my
e-mail because he was very interested in it. When I finally got an e-mail from
them saying they would like to come for a visit I had to tell Lee what I had
done," Robin said.

Lee, a local veterinarian, was not as convinced of the psychic abilities that
Fitzpatrick claimed to possess. Now, after the visit, all he can say is "there's
definitely something there."

"I was the biggest skeptic. I thought how do I explain this to my colleagues,
but there is something there. I can't explain it. She (Sonya) said things that she
would not have known otherwise. We went out of our way to make sure we
didn't drop any hints about our animals," Lee said.

The couple tells that when Fitzpatrick arrived, she was greeted by the flock of
chickens and guinea hens, animals that normally scurry away. Not only did
they greet her, but they followed Fitzpatrick as she walked the sidewalk
between the house and the cougars' cage.

"Words cannot do her arrival justice to the magic that came with her. I could
feel her presence was something special. She's for real. I know it with every
fiber that makes me alive. It was absolutely wonderful," Robin said.

Fitzpatrick said the fowl were simply saying they wanted to be on television
too. Talking with the animals had begun.

Robin said it was almost like the animals knew the pet psychic was coming.
"They were just waiting for her.

Jack, the couple's border collie, wanted to know why Robin's 15-year-old
son, Brian, "couldn't be lazy." That was the first time that Lee started to feel
some validation in Fitzpatrick's claims.

"It shocked me. How would she know that we are always teasing Brian about
being lazy?" he asked. Fitzpatrick simply told Jack that teen-age boys should
help with chores and do things.

Then there was Fubie, a cat that was once rescued from a client. Fubie shared
her stories of severe abuse from a previous home. When the Corbridges took
possession of Fubie, she had two fractured hind legs, one that had to be
pinned and the other that eventually was amputated.

"She told Sonya she was very happy here, but wanted to know what
happened to the tall lady. 'Will I get to see her again?' is what she asked. I
realized she was referring to a tech that used to work with me who is now
living in Naples. That was all she wanted to know. She got up and just walked
away," Lee said.

Cori, Robin's 18-year-old daughter, wanted Fitzpatrick to talk to Zelda, her
pet cat. Without prompting though, Fitzpatrick asked about a two-tone cat
that was scared and hiding under a bed, snuggled up to a blue pillow where it
always is. The Corbridges knew immediately it was Zelda.

Zelda told Fitzpatrick that Cori has a snake in her bedroom, but she (Zelda)
likes it. "She also asked Sonya to ask Cori if she was going to get any more
animals. 'Tell her it's kind of crowded in here.' " Robin said.

LeRoy, a gray cat, told Fitzpatrick that he was the smartest cat of all. Hilda, a
Siamese, wanted to be called "your highness. She said none of the other cats
have any couth or class."

Then the big cats took the spotlight.

"Cindy talked about everything. She shared things with Sonya about her and
Robin that I never knew before," Lee said. Cindy was Robin's cougar before
she and her husband met.

Cindy has been with Robin for eight years, Romeo for six years.

One thing that surprised the Corbridges was Cindy's question of another cat
coming to the house ... a species of her kind. "I told Sonya that we were not
taking on any more big cats. We weren't planning on it. A week after the
filming, we get a call to rescue a jungle cat or it will be put down. He is very
tawny colored, just like the cougars," Lee said. "It was like Cindy knew this
other cat was coming our way."

Cindy's biggest problem, she told Fitzpatrick, is that she likes the cats and
Romeo doesn't. The cougars cage sits next to another large cage housing
mostly domestic cats.

Romeo's complaint was that he didn't like the goats drinking from his blue
water bucket. The Corbridges had recently given Romeo a new water disk,
but he liked his previous one better.

He also confessed he didn't like the other cats because "they stare at me. I bat
at them and Cindy gets mad at me for that."

Before Fitzpatrick left, she asked to see the Corbridges lynx, Jimmy. She told
the couple that he wanted to talk to her. "I told her he wasn't real cooperative
with people. She said 'it's OK, he won't hurt me. He said he would swat me,
but not hurt me.' He did. Sonya told us that he (Jimmy) said he wanted to
swat her because she said he could," Lee said.

Fitzpatrick's experiences range from the bizarre to the unbelievable, from
learning about a human companion's private life from their dog to saving the
life of a horse who had stopped eating. The Pet Psychic opens a new door to
the world of animal interaction every Monday at 8 p.m., with new episodes
beginning in January.

Fitzpatrick will be returning to Sebring for another visit with the Corbridge
family, humans and animals alike. She wants to film Jimmy and the servals,
Kiara and Sierra, for another show.

Copyright ® 1999 News-Sun, Inc.


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