Ms Kunz was at the cosy midtown apartment of Jackie Archis, one of her regular clients. Over the last three years, Ms Kunz has helped Ms Archis with the “relationship issues” of her three cats: Gus, (the eldest, a grey princely animal), Louis (the youngest, who remains somewhat ditzy) and Howard (the “very demanding, very outspoken” but formal leader of the three).

Ms Kunz, who is 34 and has black, spiky hair, was sitting on the sofa, sipping a glass of water. Ms Archis, who was sitting opposite her, got down to business. She wanted Ms Kunz to break the news that she was going to Aruba next week. Ms Kunz nodded, jotted down the dates and then started to concentrate.

“Howard’s not talking to me,” she said, shaking her head (Howard was hiding under the sofa, in a peeve). Ms Kunz then turned her attention to Louis, who was in the kitchen, expressing his concern about whether there would be enough food. And then she consulted Gus, who was sitting in a basket on the floor.

“Gus says ‘You know I’m not getting any younger',” said Ms Kunz. Ms Archis nodded and smiled sadly. “But don’t worry, there’s nothing seriously wrong with him, he’s just yanking your chain.”

“Oh, and now Howard says he’ll talk about it with you later,” finished Ms Kunz, emphasising the last few words. Ms Archis rolled her eyes. Typical Howard.

Gretchen Kunz has been communicating with the pets of New York on a professional basis for the last three years. She will either talk to your pet “long distance” – communicating with them through a photograph or in person.

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She describes her work as a kind of translation service between pets and their owners and charges $35 for the first twenty minutes and then a dollar-a-minute after that. A typical session will set you back between $40 and $60. “In an ideal world,” she says modestly, “I wouldn’t be necessary.”

In between translating snippets of cat-talk for Ms Archis last Friday (“Gus wants to go and visit his friends in the other apartment”) Ms Kunz outlined the range of her work.

“Improper elimination,” as she deftly puts it, is the main reason why people pick up the phone. And “I’m pissed off so I’m pissing,” is frequently the diagnosis that Ms Kunz offers, after talking to the dog, cat or mink in question. Beyond that, she is called on to explain irrational behaviour and to contact dead pets.

That is not to say Ms Kunz’s work is routine, or that animals are straightforward. Although there are common traits – dogs, for example, often wonder whether they are good enough for their owners – Ms Kunz is sometimes called to counsel pets through highly individual neuroses.

The most recent crisis in Ms Archis’s pet family, for instance, came about when Howard became suddenly afraid that Gus was going to die. “I would never have figured that out,” confessed Ms Archis.

As well as attending to their varied problems, Ms Kunz must also adapt to the many ways that animals talk. “There is a cat vibe and there’s a dog vibe,” she explains, “and there are cats with a kind of dog vibe and dogs with a kind of cat vibe.” Minks and ferrets, on the other hand, talk extremely quickly while African parrots, in Ms Kunz’s experience, need a lot of conversation.

Although she acknowledges that many people are sceptical about animal communicators, Ms Kunz says that she rarely comes across doubters. “It’s often a leap of faith for people to get in touch with me in the first place,” she says, “and so I try and be gentle with them.”

Ms Kunz also stresses that she has her own scepticism to keep her in check. She says she did not believe in animal communication either until she used a psychic to talk to her cat, found that it worked, and started taking classes at a farm in upstate New York in early 2002.

Understandably, the animals can be a little bemused by Ms Kunz. She asks her clients to warn their pets that a woman will be contacting them, but she still encounters considerable surprise among cats and dogs that are being spoken to for the first time.

"Good God! Who are you? What’s going on? I didn’t know you could do that!” Is how she describes the reaction. And there are also occasions when pets express a certain cynicism about therapy in general. Ms Kunz once came across a dog (no surprises there) who thought “talking about his feelings was a bit silly”.

All in all, Ms Kunz’s work, like that of any therapist or counsellor, brings her into delicate situations and questions of trust and privacy. For that reason, when she is walking through the pet littered streets of New York, she limits herself to just saying “Hi” to the animals she passes.

"I don’t go talking to them unless I have permission,” says Ms Kunz, “because if a dog tells me something confidential, that opens up some issues. And how am I going to deal with that?

Slices of New York