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Itty-Bitty Kitty, Giant Spirit

If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you probably already know all about Lil Bub—the adorable “perma-kitten” who has captured the hearts of millions. To prepare for the next stage of Bub’s celebrity catdom, Bub's owner contacted Christine Agro...

All photos by Terry Richardson

I f you’ve spent any time on the internet, you probably already know all about Lil Bub. The tiny, adorable cat—who is a “perma-kitten” thanks to several genetic abnormalities—has captured the hearts of millions through her photos and videos, which have spread across the web like a communicable disease of cuteness. She’s (yes, Bub is a little lady) also made appearances on TV shows like Good Morning America and The View and held meet and greets all over the country with her fans.

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VICE has been following this superlatively cute cat around for some time, and we’re gearing up to release Lil Bub & Friendz, a feature-length documentary that records the travels and trials of Bub and her loyal owner, Mike Bridavsky, who has cared for her through her many health problems. (Mike donates much of the money he makes from her fame to animal-rescue charities.)

Lil Bub & Friendz won this year’s Tribeca Online Festival Best Feature Film Award and will premiere to the world at large later this summer. To prepare for the next stage of Bub’s celebrity catdom, we contacted Christine Agro, pet psychic to the stars, to peer inside Bub’s celestial being via Skype and give the pair some advice.

Christine Agro: Could you say your full name three times please? 
Mike Bridavsky: Michael Gregory Bridavsky, Michael Gregory Bridavsky, Michael Gregory Bridavsky.

And what would you like to receive from this reading? 
Whatever there is to be received; if there’s anything I need to know about Bub or the adventure we’re on.

It is quite an adventure, a whirlwind. When I look at Bub, she has a lot of light that emanates from her heart, and then she has a lot of light that comes into her. It looks like she has this connection that’s outside of what we can see and what we can understand. There’s definitely a mission there. I see information being funneled to her about being here and the role that she’s playing. It looks like she has a really big agreement with you. There’s an element of partnership. It’s very rich, it’s a very equal exchange of energy, it’s creative, it’s supportive on both sides. I’m looking at what a change and difference she makes in people’s lives, I see these ripples that go out and out and out. You know, she has this tiny stature, but what comes out of her is so large, so tremendous. In interacting with her, people feel that—it’s not that they just feel better, it’s almost like they accept themselves more after interacting with her. 

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I see a big spirit coming into this little itty-bitty body, it has an element of cat sense to it, but it also has a whole other, much larger, dynamic behind it. Not that cat energy is small, but it has this big force behind it that really seems like it comes from a greater place—like she’s something that the world needed right now. There’s a purity to her. She’s curious about all of this—what is it, what are we, what are we doing, how do we do it? It’s not like she’s just here to help everybody, though. She’s got her own life purpose, lessons to learn this lifetime.

It does look like she gets a little anxious or nervous if she’s separated from you, if she’s put into a situation and she doesn’t really understand what the purpose is or what’s happening or why, so it might be good to explain more ahead of time what the schedule’s going to be if you know she’s going to be maybe taken and put someplace, not that she’s out of your view, but just out of reach. She has a lot of tolerance.
She does, yeah.

She does have humor. Do you have a little hat that you put on her?
No hat.

There’s something about a little hat. It looks like—is it a sombrero? 
[Laughs] No. I mean, people often ask me to put sombreros on her…

Yeah, it’s a little sombrero. And there’s a sense of humor about it from her, but also a really big, like, Don’t do that
I never put anything on Bub, that’s a rule for us.

OK, that’s good, because she’s like, I don’t want the hat. Just have a sense of humor. Let me just scan through her body, is that OK?
Sure.

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I’m looking at her lungs and there’s a good deal of other people’s sadness and loss that she is pulling through her space. Some of it gets caught or hooked. So I’m just going to clear some stuff out and give her a different way of doing that if she wants to continue to do it. One thing that you might notice when she does take on too much energy is it creates a fatigue, maybe a sense of heaviness. Anybody can do the energy work that I do, so one thing you can do is close your eyes and have an image of her out in front of you and use an image of a magnet and just pull out stuff. After she does a meet and greet, it might be good to energetically clear her out.
I started studying some Reiki. At meet and greets, after the first half hour, she totally kind of falls asleep—but I can tell it’s just more than being tired, she’s like emotionally tired. And we take a break and come back in five minutes, and she’s back.

I don’t know much about Reiki. Can you focus on areas? 
Yes.

OK. So the lungs are a good place to focus because they hold the emotional loss and grief and sadness. There’s a little bit of anger energy in the liver… that’s definitely not hers, that doesn’t belong to her at all. How old is she now? 
She’s almost two.

Let me just go through and clean her aura out, see what’s there. Lots of pictures are being thrown at her—I don’t see them being bad pictures, I think it’s because she’s so visible and so many people are looking at her and watching her. Has she done any work with kids with autism? 
Not directly. She has some fans who write who have Asperger’s or autism. We’re about to get her certified to be a therapy pet.

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Nice. You know, I’ve done a lot of work with kids who have Asperger’s or levels of autism, and there’s a certain energy dynamic I see when I look at them… I think that they see a quality in her that they can really connect and relate to. It looks like there’s something really powerful and big there, in terms of the work that she can do. Anything about her health that you want to check in on? 
Her health is what I’m constantly monitoring. Her organs are, I think, in good shape. But she does have muscular issues and her bones are pretty deformed and it’s hard to gauge what’s causing it—if she has a bone disease, or if some small thing is hurting her fragile body. For example, recently, she couldn’t walk and she would scream, and then her whole body got really tight and she couldn’t walk for five days. It was horrible. I found out that she had a claw growing into her paw, and the stress of that pain caused her entire muscular system to kind of collapse and tighten up. She’s recovered from that, and I did some physical therapy with her and now she’s fine. She’s walking better than she has in a while. But yeah, I wonder if her bone condition’s going to get worse or if she’s pretty much fully developed and she’s going to stay at this level. I don’t know if you can look into that, but…

Do you know anything specific about the bone condition? 
What my vet and my specialist presume is that it’s osteoporosis, which there have only been a few reported cases of in cats. They say her bones may continue to become more deformed and get larger and bulkier and at the same time, more fragile. What was said to me the first time I brought her to the specialist was that she’s deteriorating really rapidly and that within weeks she wouldn’t be able to walk anymore, which is when I started Reiki. I had no choice. She responded so well to it, and honestly, she’s doing better now than she was even six months ago. She’s almost kind of running and playing, which she hasn’t done in a while. She’s way more active, which is great and it goes completely against what the specialist was saying.

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She definitely responds to energy work. I can see that any kind of heaviness in the bones, any kind of tension in her body, contracts the muscles and puts pressure on the bones. Are you doing anything else for her?
We’re trying this new thing called the Assisi loop, and it’s a new treatment. It’s this ring that gives off electromagnetic pulses. It’s basically like an anti-inflammatory that is totally safe. She goes on prednisone now and then when things get bad, but I try not to keep her on any pain meds if she doesn’t need them.

The prednisone could be some of the energy that I was picking up in the liver. So I agree, use it when you need to, only when she needs it.
When she was tight from the pain, I could tell it really helped. But I can also tell when she doesn’t need it anymore, and then I lay off of it.

When she was all tight did you try the Reiki?
Oh yeah. But for that, I called the healer who first started working on her. And, you know what? She came and she was like, “I don’t think this is something you should be worried about. There’s something else that I can’t put my finger on.” And I was sure—I was like, “No, this is it, this is her bone problem. It’s finally taking its toll on her.” And the healer was like, “No, I really just think this is something else.” But Bub was in horrible shape, she couldn’t walk, and I was like, I really gotta go through Bub real quick. Sure enough I saw that claw. I thought, If I could’ve caught that four days ago, it would’ve been way better. 

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Not that she has to be in pain for experiences and lessons, but you know there might have been something in those four days that she was able to move or shift or come to a different way of experiencing. I try to remind myself and other people that we are always working on learning, healing, and growing, and to not be so hard on ourselves. 
It was a learning experience. And she’s better, so it’s OK.

OK, anything else?
I think that’s it.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to meet you and to check in with her. You already know, but she’s really something.

Look out for Lil Bub & Friendz, coming this summer from VICE. For more information about Christine Agro, visit her website at christineagro.com.

More on Lil Bub:

An Important Message from Lil Bub 

VICE Loves Bub More Than You Do  

Lil Bub & Friendz - Trailer