LEWISTON – Rupert was, to the untrained eye, antsy. The big black and white, a rescue cat, looked ready to spring out of owner Donna Madison’s arms at any moment.

Michael Redsky sat calmly across from him picking up Rupert’s thoughts, which had little to do with fleeing and more to do with gratitude, love and wishing Madison didn’t work so much.

“He’s the leader of all of them here, believe it or not,” Redsky told her. Rupert, he said, already had an eye on a fluffy white female.

“She’s right in that section over there and he’s in love, but most of all, he’s in love with you,” Redsky said. “He wants me to tell you, Donna, that he’s so grateful you took him in. He’s saying you have a gift to all those you touch.”

Around them, more than a hundred people walked the aisles of the Lewiston Armory, admiring the Kurilian bobtails, Bengals and cathedral rag dolls dozing and playing in soft-sided tents.

It was Redsky’s first cat show, and his first time as a cat show’s featured “cat whisperer.”

This one, put on by the local club NauTICAts, started Friday and continues Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Redsky, from New York, said he’s been doing healing and spirit work, with people and all kinds of animals, since he was 8. He’s now 45.

“It’s not a voice, it’s a subliminal thought that’s placed in your head, (like) telepathy,” he said.

During the cat show, he was doing mini-sessions with owners, giving first impressions. Ideally, he said, a session takes two hours and starts with a photo via e-mail. While focusing on that animal – it can be alive or “passed over” – he’ll give a running commentary to his partner, Sheila Weaver. She types up a transcript.

“Some of it doesn’t make sense to me,” Redsky said, but it will make sense to the owner.

A lot of owners want to know if a cat was mad at them for putting it down, he said, and whether it suffered.

Often, “the animal will come through first and say ‘thank you’ for letting me go,” Redsky said.

Weaver, who answered questions at their booth inside the armory, said people had been coming up to her and asking whether Redsky healed animals, people or both (both) and whether it was him playing the flute on a looping CD (yes.)

When he was tied up, she pitched in when a few girls came over to ask if someone could play the flute and calm down their cat, Butterfly Kisses.

“I tried a couple of different flutes,” Weaver said. “The first one didn’t resonate with the cat; the second one did.”

Madison, from Portland, a vendor coordinator and a cat show judge, said she had used Redsky’s services before, to communicate with a cat bound for Japan. It put the animal’s nerves at ease for the trip, she said. “They told me he had a nice flight.”

Rupert came to her last November as a cat who was frequently sick with his former owner, something Redsky picked up on and Madison confirmed. Rupert’s thoughts on leading a less stressful life and having a more organized house also rang true.

“There’s confusion in my house, he’s right,” she said to Redsky. “I just wonder sometimes if he knows he’s there to stay.”

Redsky nodded. The cat knew: “He’s saying, ‘Til death do you part.'”