This has happened many times in client sessions—we’ll be talking about and working with one of the malefics, either Saturn or Mars, and then a dog will bark or a cat will come sauntered by, tail swishing against the Zoom camera. It’s a common enough occurrence that I don’t feel like I’m calling anyone out by naming this. Maybe in half of sessions there’s at least one animal hanging out somewhere in the room or the background.

What’s always weird is when a dog starts barking or whining when we’re working with Mars. Or when a cat starts pawing or nudging when we work with Saturn. This also happens a lot.

In astrology, dogs are ruled by Mars and cats are ruled by Saturn.

I sometimes take the interruptions as a sign. Not always but sometimes. When you take an event to be a sign, you’re reckoning with the implication that the universe might be conspiring to give your life meaning. You slow down and you sit with the event, trying to arrive at meaning. Sometimes the sign takes you someplace new and other times to someplace old.

Maybe I take the appearance of cats and dogs in the room to be a sign more often than I realize. My subconscious is working during the sessions too. Haven’t I found the conversation drifting towards Mars slightly more when there is a dog in appearance?

It’s incredible to work with people and see the planets show up as cats and dogs. The reason why it’s incredible is because a cat or a dog is a living person with their own life. The presence of such a creature makes you do something that is pretty cool—it makes you pay attention.

The other reason why it’s often so cool to see a client’s cat or dog appear is because I, as the astrologer, am reminded by this appearance that this client has an existing and perhaps loving relationship with the malefics long before I came into the picture. You have a relationship with your cat already. This gives you a relationship with Saturn that you know and understand. It is your astrologer who is not privy to the details of that relationship. This might also be why your astrologer is useful, because we are not privy to those details we can bring new curiosity into our conversation about your existing relationships.

Dogs are Mars ruled. Caring for dogs or building relationships with dogs is a form of Mars remediation. Small children might imagine or experience dogs as protective. When we play with dogs, we are usually a lot rougher than we are with cats but with a healthy dose of respect for a dog’s jaws and teeth. Dogs have defense wisdom, hunting wisdom, and they’re willing to wait. They’re willing to wait because they are alert to a companion human’s moods and whims. Dogs also smell. They communicate a great deal using their scent.

Human fantasies about dogs usually paint a picture of a dog as puppy-like, as overly exuberant and without self control. We tend to adopt a carceral view of dogs. Telling someone that they’re doglike might carry a suggestive tone of wanting to discipline that person. Maybe this has something to do with how we tend to deal with Mars.

Real life dogs might not fit so cleaning into our human assumptions about them. Real life dogs might not be that enthusiastic. They might know things that we don’t know—why would we train them? They might not be perfectly puppy-like or even cute. They might hold grudges or show favoritism.

Loving dogs is Mars remediation. For one thing, dogs make you move around. They make you go outside. These are some dogs. I’ve babysat dogs that actually don’t want to go outside ever. Dogs will challenge you. They test you. They see if you’re going to let them go off leash on walks or what you will do if they shit on the floor. They do these things on purpose.

Mars remediation might be about noticing what loving protection feels like. It might have to do with letting someone shit on the floor or dealing with shit general. It might have to do with taking a daily walk. Everyone has a different Mars placement. A dog will work with your Mars but it never has to.

Cats are Saturnians. I live with a cat so, on my end, I can offer a lot more to clients with my cat and with Saturn than I can with Mars. Many times, my cat has interrupted a session by coming over to tap me on the shoulder or by jumping on the desk. What’s funny is that she will ignore what I am doing most of the time even if it’s close to mealtime. She almost never interrupts a session until she sees that I am done with my work. She tends to interrupt selectively and, when she does, I have to take it as a signal that Saturn is interjecting into the session for a reason.

Just yesterday, I was doing a tarot draw and my cat picked a card. She came over with a meow and nudged one with her nose. I asked if she wanted to pick another card and she was adamant that she had selected the right card. It turned out that the card she selected was a perfect sequential accompaniment to two other cards in the spread.

The first way building relationships with cats is Saturn remediation is through their territorialism. Cats don’t like to move. If you live with a cat, they will not like it if you move too much. They make you stay in one place and, in doing so, they challenge you to commit.

Cats also operate on a schedule. 7 AM feeding and then 6 PM dinner. If you are late they will let you know. They will never forget their schedule and they expect you to behave predictably as well.

The other thing that makes cats Saturnian is that they can’t be told what to do. They’re weird and they don’t care. They just do their thing. You can’t “train” a cat to do anything. My cat does this thing where she winks one eye at you and if you wink back then she will wink back again. This isn’t something I “trained” her to do. It’s something she decided to do and taught me she likes to do. I didn’t come up with it. She did. You can’t tell a cat what to do. You have to ask them and, if they agree, they’ll put up with the demand but only when you’re in the same room as them.

There are other stereotypes about cats and dogs that lead us into thinking of them as either Martian or Saturnian. Cats invoke their right to boundary setting very frequently and need a lot of space. This is an assumption. I’ve met many cats who want to be touched all the time and my own cat likes to be spooned. We tend to assume that dogs need a lot of touch but I’ve also met some distant dogs.

Every animal, including human beings, are their own person. They’ll all have a different personality. Maybe there’s something to the idea that dogs are Martian and cats are Saturnian. Maybe it has less to do with what any animal is like on their own and how different species tend to interact with us.

Once, I heard a story about a dog who practiced walking on hind legs and talking at night. Their person caught them in the act late at night. When the dog noticed human presence, they went back on all fours and started acting like a dog again. Maybe dogs have learned to act Martian, to interact with our sense of Mars, because their species has spent so much time with us. Maybe cats have done something similar with Saturn but I doubt it. Cats don’t seem like they care very much about being cat like at all.