The Road Less Traveled… Brings Guidance From Beyond
Furry Spirits
This story is part of the ongoing series “The Road Less Traveled…”
If you’re new here, I invite you to start from the beginning, where I share the key moments that shaped my healing journey. You can find the first chapter here. Each post branches out from the first, but every story stands on its own—exploring different connections along the path of healing.
Whispers from the Other Side: Signs I Couldn’t Ignore
When I lost both my cats, “Ukkie” and “Pebbles” in early June 2021, It wasn’t until two weeks later that the full weight of their absence hit me—I collapsed in grief, sobbing uncontrollably.
I hadn’t cried for decades at this point, it was something I had a lot of difficulty with since I was a child, always the need to stay strong and not allowing to let myself go, but this opened the floodgates.
The days and weeks afterward, I was like a zombie.
Loss is a part of life, but losing the ones you love the most—whether human or animal—leaves an indelible mark. I had lived so closely with them for 15 years. They were my family, always by my side. Every day, they slept with me, followed me, waited at the door if I left the house, unhappy until I returned. Our lives were intertwined, a tight-knit family in every sense. The apartment felt colder without their presence. The sudden emptiness left me feeling like a hollow shell.
One night, grief overwhelmed me, and I cried out for them. Somehow, in my desperation, I hoped they would magically reappear. I wanted nothing more than to be with them again, to hold them just one more time. I screamed their names into the silence. Their pictures hung on the wall near the couch where I lay, and I found myself pleading with those framed memories, asking them to come back to me. The pain was unbearable—I didn’t feel their presence around me, and it left me feeling more lost than ever.
In my arms, I held a teddy bear with a hot water bottle inside it, pretending it was one of my cats. The weight of it offered some strange comfort. I would imagine Ukkie in my arms, like all the times we danced together, his paws resting on my shoulders. But no matter how hard I tried to hold on to the memories, I was at the end of my rope.
Then, something strange happened.
Through my tears, I saw a flicker of light near their photos. At first, I thought the light illuminating the frames was breaking. Frustration welled up within me—everything felt like it was falling apart. But as I wiped my eyes, I noticed it wasn’t the light; the frames themselves were moving. Gently, back and forth.
I dried my tears to get a better look, my breath catching in my throat. Was this real? I walked over to the wall, closer now, and saw it clearly: the frames were shifting, almost as if touched by an unseen hand. My heart raced, but this time, it wasn’t out of grief. It was them. Ukkie and Pebbles were there with me.
I dropped to my knees, overcome with emotion. Through tears, I thanked them. Their presence was so real, so comforting. The frames continued to move for a while longer, as if reassuring me, letting me know they were still there. For the first time since they passed, I felt them with me—not physically, but in spirit. The emptiness that had been suffocating me began to fade, replaced with a warmth, knowing they were still watching over me and guiding me.
Consciously Grieving
Even with their spiritual presence, the nights were still unbearable. I missed their warmth, their purring, the feeling of them curled up beside me. After a few months, I realized I needed to grieve consciously if I was ever going to move forward. This wasn’t my first experience with loss, but it was the most intense. I knew I had to be mindful about it. I performed little rituals, ways to say goodbye to them, but every time I thought I was making progress, I found myself falling back into grief. I hadn’t cried as much in my whole life as I did that whole year
The Signs in Mexico
After almost a year of intense grief, it started to feel more manageable. It didn’t consume me in the same way. The empty place we had shared for so long was now something I needed to move away from. And with that in mind, I decided to take a step—one that could help with both my agoraphobia and my grief. So I packed up and went to Mexico, hoping a radical change might make all the difference.
When I first arrived, I stayed in a large house with two other housemates. It was perched on a hill, overlooking the ocean, with only a few other houses nearby and the rest surrounded by jungle.
I knew it was the rainy season and, having lived in a rainy country most of my life, I wasn’t too concerned. But what I wasn’t used to was the idea of losing power in a storm. In my home country, everything’s underground, and outages are pretty much nonexistent.
Facing Fear in the Dark
The thought of being plunged into total darkness, especially in the jungle and a raging ocean in front of me, terrified me. I stocked up on candles on arrival and made sure my devices were fully charged so I’d have music to soothe me if it would happen. The idea of facing the dark—especially with the vast ocean in front of me and the untamed jungle behind—was enough to make my anxiety spike.
And then, that first week, it happened.
The storm came with a fury. The wind and rain felt as though they were inside the house, battering everything. Water poured into the open spaces where there were no windows flooding the living room, and the noise was so violent it felt like the storm was alive. My fear grew as the thunder rolled in, and then it happened—the power went out.
Panic set in. I ran to my room, clutching my laptop, trying to stave off the hyperventilation creeping up on me. I lit the candles in strategic points of my room and sat on the bed, on the verge of a full blown panic attack, when all of a sudden the light above the pictures of Ukkie and Pebbles—pictures I had taken with me—slowly started to glow. It was gradual, like a light waking from sleep, growing until it was fully illuminated.
I sighed in relief, my panic easing. I knew, without a doubt, it was them. Ukkie and Pebbles, showing me they were still with me, just as they had before. My housemates came to check on me and were baffled. The entire area was in darkness, yet here I was, with one solitary light shining above my bed.
This became a pattern. Every time a storm rolled in, and the power went out, I’d run to my room, and the light would already be there, shining and waiting for me to wrap me in comfort and safety. It happened five times while I lived there, each time leaving my housemates in awe.
But something changed during the fifth storm. I noticed that I wasn’t as scared anymore. By then, I had gotten used to the storms. I no longer ran immediately to my room—I’d start cleaning up the living room first, wiping up the rain that had leaked in. I realized I was adjusting, getting stronger. And then, that night, as I sat on the bed during another blackout, I had a thought: I’m not that scared of the storms and the dark anymore.
As if on cue, the light slowly dimmed, and then went out completely.
I sat there, candles flickering around me, and smiled. “I see what you did there,” I whispered to my cats, “I get it now.” They had been weaning me off the fear for the unknown and were preparing me to stand on my own again.
And I did.
After that night, there were no more outages, and no more lights coming on by themselves. But I didn’t need them to. They had helped me get through the worst of it.
After those storms subsided and the first four months had passed I had come to terms with Ukkie and Pebbles’ new presence in my life, I moved into a new place in the village, out of the jungle. It was a bit of an adjustment, especially being so close to people again. My neighbor, a friendly Canadian, had helped me find the apartment, which sat behind a lively Canadian bar. Sometimes, the noise was overwhelming, especially after so much time spent in solitude with my cats. But slowly, I adapted.
From my apartment, I had a view of a garden with a small pool, and beyond the gate of that garden, across the street, there was a field. Behind it was a little alley. I’d often walked passed that alley via the main road that was around the corner, and it was there, in October, that I found him—the street cat who would soon become a part of my next story.
The Void of Christmas Without Them
He was in terrible shape when I first saw him, so I started feeding him regularly.
By December, as Christmas approached, I couldn’t help but think of how different it was from all the years I had spent with Ukkie and Pebbles. Every Christmas, we had our own tradition. While others celebrated with decorations and gifts, I used that time for my version of “spring cleaning.” I’d unplug from the world, turn on music, and spend the days cleaning and reorganizing the apartment from front to back. Ukkie and Pebbles would follow me around, getting in the way of everything I did, it was our special time. It was our Christmas.
The best part was the dancing. Ukkie loved to be held, his paws resting on my shoulders as I swayed him back and forth to the rhythm of our favorite playlist, Spanish songs. Pebbles, being more independent, occasionally let me hold her for a quick dance too, but Ukkie lived for those moments. One song, in particular, became our song, though I had never known its lyrics or meaning. It was just ours.
I dreaded that first Christmas in Mexico. The town’s festive energy felt foreign to me. Everyone around me was preparing to the upcoming celebration, it couldn’t keep me from thinking about my Christmas with them, the holiday was just a reminder of what I had lost. I posted on Facebook about them, sharing my memories of how we used to spend Christmas. I wrote about missing them and how I hoped that this year, they would still be there with me in spirit, dancing like we always had.
A Christmas Sign
On Christmas Day, I went out to feed the street cat in the alley. The main road was eerily quiet, deserted even, which felt odd. It seemed like everyone was inside, celebrating with their families, just as they would do back home. As I fed the cat and turned to leave, something urged me to look back. He usually attacked the food the moment I gave it to him, but this time he didn’t. Instead, he looked me straight in the eyes, almost as if he wanted to say something.
“I love you, Precious. Merry Christmas,” I whispered, feeling an overwhelming sadness for this cat who deserved the life Ukkie and Pebbles had lived. Precious slow blinked at me and started eating his food.
It gave me a little pause and I walked back on to the main road, when I suddenly heard it—our song. The same song I used to dance with Ukkie to, playing now loudly from a nearby empty taco shop. I stopped in my tracks, smiled, and looked up at the sky, thanking Ukkie for being there with me. Right there, in the middle of the deserted street, I began to dance. I held my shoulders as if I was holding Ukkie, swaying to the familiar tune. For the first time that Christmas, I smiled. He was there, in spirit, dancing with me one more time.
The Lyrics That Broke Me
Over a year later, back in my home country, on the third anniversary of their passing, I decided to look up the lyrics of the song, It occurred to me that I had never known what we had been dancing to all those years. When I found the translation, I was overwhelmed and broke down in tears. The song was called “Vivir Sin Aire,” which means “Living Without Air.” The lyrics spoke of how a fish cannot live without water, a flower cannot live without the earth, and a bird cannot fly without its wings. And just like that, the song expressed exactly how I had felt all along—like I couldn’t live without Ukkie and Pebbles by my side.
To make it even more profound, I learned that the song was by one of the most popular bands in Mexico, and yet, besides hearing it from my own speakers all those years, I had never heard it anywhere else before or after again, except on that first Christmas Day in Mexico.
Through all of this, I realized that Ukkie and Pebbles had never truly left me. They had been beside me, guiding me through the hardest times and sending me new lessons to learn along the way. After they passed, I put some of their ashes in a tiny plant that my neighbor had given me. I was never much of a green thumb, but that little plant grew into a giant, thriving in my living room today—the very place where we had once danced together.
- Patricia Isabella -
Their guidance did not end here, they had another surprise for me in the form of my Mexican rescue cats “Kanu” and “Tau”, which is a story for another day…
Thank you for following me along The Road Less Traveled and the healing it has brought. Stay tuned for the next chapter of the story, where my journey with Precious took an unexpected turn—one filled with heartbreak and lessons I never saw coming.
Have you ever experienced signs from a loved one who’s passed on?
I’d love to hear about your own experiences in the comments below.
Oh Patricia, what a wonderful story to share! I remember hearing about it all as it was happening but to read it all together and summed up is priceless! It's been an honor to witness your growth and strength! 💓🙏🏼😻😻💡🎼