Astrology And Our Four-Footed Friends

Back in 2020 when Covid ruled the earth, Michelle and I adopted a kitten named Benny. We only knew the approximate date of his birth, but naturally we wanted to come up with a chart for him. What astrologer could resist that temptation? 

Normally when astrologers lack a time of birth for someone, they employ the technique called rectification – a technical process which involves working backward through known dates of big events in order to create a chart that would have predicted their timing. We then presume that to be the accurate chart. The trouble was that with Benny, we really only had one such known date – the luckiest day of his life, which was when Michelle and I became his devoted servants.

Working with only one date is a big no-no in rectification. I usually recommend at least ten, plus I want them spread out over several years. That was impossible with a twelve-week-old kitten. For fun, I dived in anyway and fiddled around with the possibilities. I also added some synastry based on the connection between my chart and his. After a while, I came up with a tentative chart. I took it all with a grain of salt, but I wrote about the rectification process in my November newsletter that year. If you’re interested, you can still read it on my website

A more polished version of the same article was also included in my book, The Endless Sky.

Benny is now six years old, so I know him better. He’s a Taurus with (we’re pretty sure) Libra rising. Venus ruling both his Sun and his Ascendant makes him Mister Venus, which really fits. He’s the friendliest cat I’ve ever had. He slept between Michelle and me on Night One, and he still does. He hates being left alone. He’s friendly with our guests. And he’s beautiful.

He’s also got a Sagittarian Moon – and his first clown-act as a tiny kitten in our house was to leap up on an end table and kick over the Martini I was drinking in his honor.

His rectified chart seems to fit his reality very well, in other words.

A SECOND HINT ABOUT BENNY’S TIME OF BIRTH

Until recently, Michelle and I had a second cat. That was Nemo – a year-old shelter kitty that came into Michelle’s life via a long story involving the death of a dear soul-friend of hers long before she and I were together as a couple. Sadly, Nemo passed away on March 10, 2026. We think she was a Pisces; if so, she died right around her twentieth birthday. That’s definitely old age for a cat and it was time for her to go. She died in my lap and we mourned her like a family member.

Nemo’s death was naturally a big event in Benny’s life too, so I now had a second date to work with. She had been with him since he joined our family. Even before that, he’d really never been alone – in the shelter where we adopted him, he was one of five brothers, all in a big cage playing with each other. Given his Venusian nature, being alone for the first time – at least in terms of fellow felines – would come as a huge shock. 

If such a major development were not heralded by the chart that I had rectified for him, it would be “back to the old drawing board” for sure. I wasn’t disappointed. Have a look at Benny’s transits on the day that Nemo journeyed to the astral worlds: 

Let me direct your attention to that 7th house cuspal area. Transiting Venus is almost exactly on the Descendant. Getting a bit dark here, that happy Venusian symbolism might fit for a death that pleased us, but it doesn’t leap out and ring true in Benny’s case – he and Nemo were not enemies. 

The transiting Saturn-Neptune conjunction, on the other hand, could hardly be clearer or more relevant, and it was in that same area too. That’s especially true of Saturn – the Lord of Solitude – entering Benny’s 7th house. On the day that Nemo died, it was not quite there yet, standing two and a half degrees short of the cusp, but it was very close. 

Two thoughts immediately enter my mind. First – and any experienced astrologer will confirm this – such transits do not have to be exact to be felt in a very real way. Two and a half degrees is “close enough,” so we can’t rule out the idea that the rectified chart is accurate. My second thought is that maybe Benny was born a few minutes earlier than what my initial rectification suggested. That’s certainly a possibility too, especially with a rectification that was done on the shaky basis of only one event. 

I’m inclined to go with the latter interpretation – that Benny is a few minutes older than my original calculations suggested. That would make us rock his Ascendant back a degree or two. I suspect that’s the case, but my better angels tell me not to be hasty. A rectification based on only two events isn’t much more reliable than one based on a single event. Let’s wait for more to happen in Benny’s life and see what patterns emerge over time.

Certainly, one encouraging bottom line is that the timing of Nemo’s death is a strong vote that Benny’s chart is pretty close to accurate. It passes the only test that matters: it works. The fabled “Lord of Solitude” enters Benny’s “house of relationships,” and, right on schedule, he faces solitude for the first time in his life.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

I’m sure that most of you readers who have four-footed friends have thought about their astrological personalities. If you’re lucky enough to have birth dates or even birth times for them, I’m also confident that you’ve seen astrology working as effectively for them as it does for you and your friends and clients. Astrology in fact reflects the experiences of everything that comes into being at a specific moment, whether it’s alive or not. That’s simply a fundamental law of the universe. 

• Astrology works for corporations – that’s how financial astrologers stay in business. 

• Start a relationship? If you know the day and time it began, it has a chart too.

• Astrology even works for ideas – one pops into your head, you jot down the time, and you can get a sense of where that idea will go if you decide to run with it. That gets us into the territory of horary and electional astrology.

All of this brings us to a closely related question. Many of us share our lives with companion animals. Humans have lived with other creatures since prehistory, but our relationship with them now in the modern world is different from the way it was in the past. Is it time for us to rethink how astrology might address these emotionally-significant relationships?

WHAT’S THE HOUSE OF PETS?

Since human beings have practiced astrology, the answer to that question has generally been seen as settled practice. Almost all the traditional sources agree that the 6th house is the domain of our furry friends. I just quickly Googled it and got this:

The sixth house is the primary house of pets, small animals, and domestic creatures in astrology. It governs the daily care, feeding, health, and routine maintenance of pets, reflecting the service-oriented relationship between humans and their animals. 

I wonder though . . .

There’s a drum I’ve often beaten in astrological circles: times change. If astrology is going to remain viable, it must change with those times. One example of this is how in astrology books of a century ago, you would often read one interpretation if a certain configuration were found in a man’s chart and a different one if it were found in a woman’s chart. Forgetting the current culture wars for a moment, we can simply observe that hardly anybody talks like that anymore. For almost all of us, rigid gender identities are just not relevant in the same way that they once were. 

Here’s my point: in the lines that I just quoted from my Google search about pets, one phrase jumps out as similarly quaint and anachronistic: “reflecting the service-oriented relationship between humans and their animals.” 

That’s “service” notion is still probably true for a farmer and his cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep. In a sense, they “serve” him. But what about that farmer’s dog? Maybe yes, maybe no. That dog certainly provides a service – but I bet that dog has a name and that when that dog dies, the farmer sheds a tear. In many cases, “Rover” probably feels more like a friend or a family member than a “service animal.”

Isn’t that generally true of the way most of us think of our pets nowadays too? Reflexively, if I collide with Benny in a hallway, I’ll say “excuse me,” as if he were a human being. I often find myself speaking English to him as if he could understand – and sometimes I think he does. Naturally, like all cat people, Michelle and I often refer to him as His Highness or His Lordship. We think we’re joking, but are we? 

If he’s lucky, Benny may catch the occasional mouse out in our courtyard, but basically he no more “performs a service” for us than our friends do. That’s not how we think of him – or them. In fact, his real service to us actually is friendship. 

What about 6th house obedience, as befits a servant? Forget about it – he’s a cat! 

SO WHICH HOUSE REALLY REPRESENTS OUR PETS?

All in all, I think it is time for astrologers to reconsider how we frame the astrological symbolism around pets. Undoubtedly, there are still people whose relationship with their cats or dogs has a 6th house quality, but I suspect that they are now in the minority.

Here’s what I want to run up the flagpole in hopes that we can generate some much-needed dialog in the astrological community. Just as astrological symbolism can be very nuanced when describing our various kinds of human relationships, similarly in speaking with our clients about their companion animals, I think we need to escape the antiquated mental ghetto of reflexively binning them all in the 6th house.

I believe that for myself – and probably for a great number of other pet “owners” – the nature of my relationship with Benny has more of a 7th house flavor than a 6th house one. Benny and I are buddies and we’re in it together for the long run, end of story. 

• Let's check a technical astrological box: Benny is a Taurus and that’s the sign on my 7th house cusp.

With equal confidence, I could also suggest that our cats and dogs often feel more like our children than our 7th house “equals” or our 6th house “servants.” How often in fact have you heard people refer to their pets as “the kids?” The words are intended playfully, but they actually say something very real about the nature of the experienced relationship. If that’s the case, we would look to 5th house symbolism for your cats or dogs. What about your goldfish? I don’t know – you tell me. I guess it’s possible there too.

Living with another being under one roof with a “‘til death do us part” attitude – that’s almost the definition of family. More often than not, our cats and dogs qualify there too. Astrologically, that compels us to recognize that for some people, the 4th house might provide the most resonant symbolism. Someone, for example, might lose their beloved dog. At the time, nothing much is happening in their 6th house – but Pluto just transited into their 4th. In practical terms, no modern counseling astrologer can afford to be blind to that symbolism.

The underlying point is simply that times change. Our relationship with our companion animals is changing along with it. Our four-footed friends mean something different to us today than they typically did in the Year One. As ever, astrology must never become so blinded by its own traditions that we forget to keep our eyes and hearts open to ever-changing reality. 

I can think of two take-aways based on these speculations:

• If you share your life with another creature, which house fits your experience best? Your answer may be different than mine.

• If you work with clients and the subject of their pets comes up, ask some questions before you make any assumptions.

The conversation between ourselves and the creatures with whom we share our planet is evolving in new directions. Astrology is capacious enough to embrace that changing reality. Can astrologers do the same?

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