Animals Reacting To Tarot

Have any of you had pets (or friends who had pets) who reacted either positively or negatively to a Tarot deck?

Like when it's simply lying on a table it doesn't bother them, but once you shuffle them they become visibly apprehensive and growls and barks at the direction of the deck? It is the definitely the deck because once you place it somewhere away from you it shows its hostility in that direction.

What does one do when that happens? Should you subject your deck to industrial-strength cleansing(tm)? How do you proceed with it?

This didn't happen to myself btw, but to someone else. I'd be happy to know your experiences on how your pets or other animals reacted to your Tarot decks.

Our tuxedo cat, Moo, seems fond of my tarot room, and spends a good deal of time napping on top of and under my tarot table. She seems quite happy to curl up on a spread cloth if I leave one out, and to rub her head against my little statue of Isis. (So....she's a pretty typical cat .)

The only specific reaction I've ever seen her have to a deck was a year or so ago -- I'd gotten a new deck (I can't remember which now), and did a reading for myself, then set the cards down for a few minutes.

Moo came over and immediately swatted at the Sun card, repeatedly, specifically. She kept at it until the card was flipped upside down.

And yeah, cats swat at things routinely -- it's in their nature. But she seemed deliberately fixated on that card; it struck me as weird at the time.

Nothing came of it, though; I didn't notice any specific influence or incident related to the Sun card in the days afterward.

Maybe that was her way of telling me that I'd drawn the wrong card?

My cats' experiences are probably just typical cat behavior. My anitsocial, mean ole Tom cat will swat at the cards when I have them out just to make them fall off the table. My Siamese, on the other hand often sits on the table and stares at them, as though he's reading them himself.

Mine don't react to my decks much. The cat sometimes wants to play with the drawstrings/ribbons on my pouches but that's a whole other issue. lol

What made me reply is that there is one time that I'll never forget. I was near the end of a relationship with a not-great guy in my life who always came up in readings as the same card. The moment I made my firm decision to stick firm to removing him from my life, my dog, out of her usual character, scattered my deck onto the floor and before I could reach her, she'd chewed that particular card and only that card. The rest of the deck was completely unharmed.

Never before or after that has she ever attempted to snatch a deck or put her mouth on any of my cards. She's been with me for 8.5 years and was already an adult when I found her.

When I do Reiki my cats want to hang with me, but one of my cats loves being next to me whenever I meditate, and since I get into a partial meditative state with Tarot he wonders why I'm not just zenning out and thinks I need to put the cards down so he can just be with me.

Universes Collide, that is amazing. Thank you for sharing that experience.
Annabelle, that could be. Animals are good at knowing when our mojo is off. Both of my cats try interrupt my PTSD work (I'm in a Cognitive Processing Therapy for Trauma group, which includes homework), because they don't like how much my anxiety raises. But they love it when I do Reiki or meditate, or just lay down on the couch to read, etc.

My dogs have always been "meh" toward my cards. Except my paper-obsessed dog who stole and chewed up my Housewives Tarot Box. (Bad Girl!) I had one cat who used to steal cards if I left them out on the table. And she'd sit on them when I was reading sometimes. But she was quite a character in other respects as well, and borrowed things belonging to me all the time.

My guess is the animals are sensing the owners feelings, with such an extreme reaction. If the owner is afraid of the cards, or feels they may be haunted/cursed, whatever, animals might pick up on that.

(Personally I think a lot of that is human perception, I take the whole "possessed by evil" thing with huge grains of salt, and a bow to people's imaginations...)

Or could there be a bad smell lingering in the cards that the humans don't catch?

Wow I didn't know there are quite a gew animal lovers here. We have two cats too, a gray Napoleon cat (I'm not particular about cats but I like her a lot since she's so charming and congenial and not stuck up at all) and her son, a whitey with different colored eyes. We also have seven dogs in our home btw - a heartthrob pug, four shih tzus who sometimes drive us nuts, an Alaskan malamute, and a handsome street dog. None of them are allowed in my study room since they might chew my books, but those who do get in sometimes just stare at my Tarot decks and don't disturb them.

I noticed all of the previous posters including I have cats. It seems like there's a sort of affinity between readers and felines? Who else has cat/s here?

VGimlet said:

Or could there be a bad smell lingering in the cards that the humans don't catch?

Click to expand...

I also considered this, although I was leaning towards the explanation that the sound she made while she was shuffling the cards made her dog apprehensive?

The experiences by Annabelle and UniversesCollide are rather strange though. I wonder what is at work there that made their pets choose those particular cards? Can their pets' instincts and their intuition match somehow?

Very interesting, UniversesCollide! I'd suspect that you were feeling enough intense anger towards the guy that it temporarily transferred to "his" card -- with a strong enough vibe for your dog to pick up on and instinctively respond to; maybe aggression-promoting pheromones were involved, too... So she finally snapped and acted out what you may have felt like doing to him, yourself, on some deep level. The pooch must feel very connected to you.

My cat loves it when I read - and likes to lay on top of my cards, as well.

My dogs, on the other hand, could care less. I don't think they have ever so much as noticed me doing cards, at any time.

I think maybe you're on to something, EK - the sound of the shuffling may have disturbed the dog on some level. Some breeds (like Spaniels) will unexpectedly flip out at the sound of a newspaper being rustled, so cards being shuffled might be an issue for some dogs.