By Anne Levin

It’s hard to believe Sonya Fitzpatrick ever had a problem speaking. But the woman known to Sirius XM radio listeners all over the world as The Pet Psychic, an official “animal communicator,” was born with hearing loss, and she didn’t utter a word until she was five years old.

Several decades later, the words come rushing out as Fitzpatrick tells a caller why her cat dropped dead at the tender age of three. She’s full of heart-tugging anecdotes on a youtube video that shows her communicating with a shaggy little rescue dog about how happy the dog is in her new home.

During a recent telephone interview with Fitzpatrick, I decided to give her skills a try. I asked if she could make contact with my dearly departed miniature poodle, who died nearly three years ago at age 17. Was I skeptical? Yes.

But after hearing that Pooch liked the beige carpet in our old house better than the wood floor in the new one, I began to doubt my own doubts. How could she know that? I admit, I was giddy when I heard that Pooch was “with me all the time,” as Fitzpatrick said, and that she thought she was a person and not a dog – something I always said about her.

Whether Fitzpatrick is the real deal or not, she is very convincing. She is charming, kind, and she calls everyone “darling.” The British accent helps. It’s comforting.

Sonya at age 14 with her dog Silky

Born in a small village in England’s Northamptonshire, she was surrounded by animals as a child. “Because of my hearing loss, I didn’t speak but I used to talk to them telepathically. I thought everybody could do that. You know how it is when you’re young – you think everyone is like you,” she said during our telephone chat. “I didn’t think too much about it.”

Eventually, the hearing loss was corrected and Fitzpatrick began to talk. But she stopped communicating with the animals after her father turned her three pet geese into Christmas dinner. “I was heartbroken,” she recalled. “It was so painful. I cut off talking to animals till many years later.”

After moving to the United States, Fitzpatrick happened to meet a woman who was an animal communicator, and she began to use her intuitive abilities once more. It wasn’t long until word got out about her gift. “It spread so fast, I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I had a lady in New York who had problems with her dogs. I talked to them and sorted them all out. She had a house on Fire Island, and I went there, and soon people were coming over on the ferry with dogs, cats, snakes – everything. A publisher happened to see all of this on the boat, and she asked me to write a book.”

That was “What the Animals Tell Me,” in 2003. Next came a show on TV’s Animal Planet called “The Pet Psychic,” and two more books. While the show only lasted a few years, Fitzpatrick’s weekly radio program has been drawing record numbers of callers to Sirius XM for years. On her website sonyafitzpatrick.com, pictures of dogs, cats, birds, fish, and rabbits share space with shots of Fitzpatrick and Ellen DeGeneres, Paula Abdul, comedian Wanda Sykes, and various other celebrities.

On her television show, Fitzpatrick used to communicate with the animal while it was sitting next to her. But on the radio, it all comes from a simple phone call. No live contact, no photographs. So how does she do it? “I pick up the animal from the human companion’s energy,” Fitzpatrick said. “I get a magnetic field link, asking them a question. It just astounds people. I don’t know how I do it but I feel it in my body.”

One of Fitzpatrick’s most memorable achievements was getting a herd of elephants in Africa to move from one location to another, away from hunters, she said. She wasn’t sure she could do it — it wasn’t the usual phone call with the “human companion” that started the process. “They sent me a picture of the herd, and I talked to them and said you can walk the route they want you to take,” she said. “I told the elephants who would be walking with them, and that it would be safe. They arrived within 10 days. I was amazed, but I knew when they were on the move. It was the most astounding thing that it actually worked. They are highly intelligent, of course. But it was an incredible experience.”

A private session to find out why your pets, dead or alive, behave the way they do, comes at a price: $300 for a half hour. Too steep? There’s always “Animal Intuition,” which airs Sundays from 5-7 p.m. on Channel #109 Sirius XM. Just be prepared to wait your turn if you call in. The show is among the most popular on the channel.