TORONTO – Dog whisperer Cesar Millan now has a feline-focused counterpart.
Cat behaviourist Jackson Galaxy, a.k.a. “the cat whisperer,” braves the sharp claws of feisty felines in the new three-part series “My Cat From Hell,” debuting Tuesday on Animal Planet.
“It’s one of those things where you’re in a room and you just find that you can speak ‘cat’ and nobody else can,” Galaxy, 45, said as he described his innate talent in a recent phone interview from just outside Los Angeles.
“It just happens.”
Galaxy – who is also a rock musician and has a shaved head, sculpted goatee and multiple cat-themed tattoos – goes into the homes of Southern California cat owners who are distressed over their fractious pets.
“I’ve never met a cat that I couldn’t at least help, and that doesn’t mean just me,” said Galaxy. “There are resources that don’t have to be all about what I can do. The guardians have to take a vested interest.”
Tuesday’s debut includes a black cat named Bear, whose demonic growling and hissing is causing arguments between his owners. Bear swats at Galaxy in the beginning, giving him a deep gash in his hand. The cat eventually comes around after Galaxy determines Bear feels powerless and trapped.
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“I can’t think of a place that I haven’t been bit or scratched,” said Galaxy.
“In my shelter experience, I’ve been bitten by a 120-pound dog and I’ve been bitten by a six-week-old cat and the kitten did twice the damage that the dog did,” he said.
“I know the damage cats can do and it’s OK with me. It hurts and it goes away.”
Surprisingly, Galaxy grew up with dogs, not cats, and didn’t get his first feline companion until college, when his girlfriend pleaded with him to let her have a neighbour’s kitten.
He became more familiarized with cats when he worked at an animal shelter in Boulder, Colo., from 1994 to 2004.
“When I first got there it seemed like – and really, this is just something that we saw in the ’90s in shelters anyway – the push was a little more dog-centric, that dogs were getting a little more attention in terms of rehabilitation, enhancement for their stay there,” said Galaxy, who how has four cats and two dogs.
“We just didn’t know what to do with cats and when I got that first-hand view of that, and I had what I felt was a good relationship with cats, I kind of went into action a little bit and I started to, whenever I could, just make the cats that were in the shelter more adoptable.”
Eventually Galaxy started going into the homes of cat owners and partnered with a holistic veterinarian, Dr. Jean Hofve, in a business in which they did mind-body consults on animals. The two also started up Spirit Essences, a line of flower essences used as remedies for ailing pets.
While Galaxy looks to natural, holistic remedies first, he concedes that some “cats need to be on medication, just like humans.”
“You can’t deny chemical imbalances in animals any more than you could in humans,” he said.
“I’ve known cats … who act out because they’ve got a bad tooth or because they’re losing one of their senses, they’re going deaf or blind.”
“My Cat From Hell” has already been a hit on Animal Planet in the U.S., which has ordered six more episodes.
Galaxy hopes the success of the series will allow him to expand his work with the veterinary community and with shelters.
“What I can bring now is I can go shelter to shelter if I need to and show you, if you have the resources and you have the energy to do it, how to make small changes and stop killing cats,” he said.
“It’s that simple.”
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