One of the first things the little ferrets showed us, over 11 years
ago, is how they empathically take on the inner anguish of their
human companions and often that absorbtion of theirs creates life-
threatening internal ulcers in the ferrets. Almost the only thing
one can do to stop that from happening is to remove the ferret from
the proximity of the person to whom they are empathically attached
to the tune of at least 10 miles distance, and then the greater the
distance, the less overwhelmed are the affected ferrets. The first
little ferret who taught us this was Molly Blue Angel who belonged
to a member of the (American)Navy's Blue Angels flying team. The
main part of her story is
here...http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/ferret_rescuer/index.html ,
but the eventual upshot of her relationship with her person was that
his inner turmoil was killing her as she was absorbing his angst and
upsetment, completely unable to "turn off" the psychic connection
without great physical distancing. She actually did not fully heal
until he was trandferred over 1200 miles from her and our shelter's
location.
So we were taught clearly and decisively that animals empathize and
will at least try to absorb the pain and anguish of humans. Humans
can process this better without the damages the inner painfulness
can cause spiralling out of control as almost happened to tiny
little blind-but-determined Molly who could curl up inside the palm
of your hand...when she wasn't barrelling blindly around finding a
cat and gnoshing on the poor cat's ear.

Each of us alive, both humans and non-humans, have the abilities to
walk in and out of the multiple dimensions...I'm sure that's how the
ferrets occasionally disappear and then reappear right before our
eyes in the middle of the floor, and it may account for the cats'
sometimes teleporting themselves through seemingly very thickly
solid structures. None of the animals are in any real
way "religious" and yet they and we human-apes have all the same
innate abilities which we sometimes use to assist ourselves and one
another across the species-lines.(consider the service-horses, the
paraplegic's helpful capuchin monkeys, certainly many kinds of
service-dogs and wild dolphins and others whose very presence is
healing, shall we not do well to emulate them!)
:)