Cats on the couch

When you first meet Sonya Fitzpatrick, you'd be hard pushed to find anything strange about her. Immaculately presented and dressed head to toe in a smart little beige two-piece, the only hint this pretty middle-aged woman gives of possible eccentricity is a pair of fantastically huge, hexagonal Jackie O-style shades. Yet Sonya claims to be able to talk to animals. Indeed, she's a pet psychic and, through her new book, says she is able to help you talk to your cat.

Brought up on a Northamptonshire farm, where she struggled with an acute hearing problem and dyslexia, she says she realised her gift at an early age. 'I began talking to animals before human beings,' Sonya says. 'It was as easy as breathing and I didn't even realise other people couldn't do it until I got older. Adults just thought I had a vivid imagination - except my grandmother, who had the same gift.'

Her pet goose's unfortunate inclusion as the main course at the family table one Sunday lunchtime led to Sonya 'switching off' her gift for years. But when a modelling career in the US beckoned, she employed a pet psychic to stay in touch with her menagerie in England and found she still had the skill herself.

Sonya's career as a pet psychic took off when she helped a New York art dealer's dog stop chewing the furniture. As word of mouth spread, her client list grew and she was given her own 'Jerry Springer for spaniels' show (sorry, the pull of the pun was too great) Pet Psychic on the US Discovery Channel.

Sonya's book is an easy-to-follow mixture of her life story, tips and case studies, based around the astonishing claim she can communicate with animals through the Earth's electromagnetic lines just by looking at a picture.

I take along a picture of my British Blue cross cat, Bodie, to test Sonya's ability. While you do feel a tad silly talking to your pet through a lady who's six miles away from it, some of the things she tells me are uncanny. She knows Bodie likes crunchy food (he hates the wet stuff), that he's currently eating fish-flavoured ones, that we got him from a shelter and that we're having work done on our house. But Sonya tells me Bodie thinks I have a great sense of humour - and anyone who knows me can vouch how wrong that is. As for some of the other things, well, those readers retaining a healthy sense of scepticism may argue that they're proof Sonya is little more than a fairground act. 'He says someone has a new haircut' and 'He likes to bop you with his paw', being the best examples.

I'm still not entirely convinced by my reading, but where Sonya's loyalties lie is unquestionable. When I ask if she ever uses her psychic abilities on human beings, she exclaims: 'I couldn't care less about human beings, dear. They carry too much junk and never tell the truth. At least animals never lie.'