CATS

A SWALE BY THE COMPOST BIN BECAME A SMALL POND, SO STU THOUGHT WE NEEDED TO PUT OUR RUBBER DUCKY OUT TO SWIM.

Cats don't understand time in quite the same way we do: they have a strong sense of patterns and rituals, but they take their cues from the rise and set of the sun and from our actions, not from the location of the minute and hour hands on the clock.

The sun has started to rise "earlier" relative to the clock that guides my day. So Leo starts his plaintive crying for breakfast outside the bedroom door 15 minutes before the alarm clock is set to go off. It's a good thing daylight savings is coming!

Whatever the time, once I'm up to feed them, Leo and Lily are able to decipher what kind of day is coming. There are the days that start off really well: I feed them, then a toy comes out, and for at least 15 minutes they get to run around and play with me. They like this, and it means that we are in the pattern where I go away, sometime later Stu gets up, and they get to sit on his lap at intervals, with long lapses of sleep in various favored spots (um, that would be the cats, not Stu). Eventually he feeds them. That usually means I'll be home soon, so they hang out in the front window to watch me pull into the driveway.

But some days, I get up and feed them, then inexplicably go back to bed. Leo tries to be patient, but by 8:30 he is back at his post outside the bedroom door, carrying on pathetically like a doomed creature. Eventually one of us will get up and open the door. He leaps onto the bed, knits on my bathrobe, bumps heads with us, purrs his head off, and settles down for some face rubbing before he does his ritual exploration of the room, opening closet doors and the drawers under the bed. Meanwhile Lily sneaks in for some pets from Stu. Eventually the two of them start the Let's Run Up and Down the Halls and In and Out of the Rooms Really Fast game and soon its time for more laps and sleeping.

Hard to know, from a cat point of view, if one kind of day is "better" than another. But my brother in law, Howie, says that if there is reincarnation he wants to come back as one of his cats. I totally understand.