I was eating my birthday breakfast of bacon and eggs, an unusual departure from my otherwise vegetarian diet, when Sarah entered the dining room and began to meow.  Over the years I've come to guess her wants, even though all meows sound the same to me.  I make my guess from context, and her actions.  Usually, when Sarah's hungry, she'll knock over a plastic container with her food inside, and the one-foot fall can be heard throughout my mobilhome.  Her sister, Mahi, has learned how to pull down a ribbon/shoe-string toy the kids made for her, and I always reward her with play when I notice that the ribbon toy has been pulled down.

Although Sarah hadn't knocked down the food container, I was anxious to quiet her, so I got up to check her food dish.  After watching me put more food in a dish that already had some in it, Sarah walked impatiently down the hall.  This usually meant she wanted me to open the sliding door to the "sun room," so named for it's many windows of which the eastern ones were the most appreciated in mornings.  I was puzzled to see what I thought I knew, that I had already opened the sun room; yet Sarah entered, and meowed.  "What can be your problem!" I exclaimed.  That's when I realized that it was overcast, there was no sunlight in the sun room, and maybe Sarah was asking me to "turn on the sun!"

Poor Sarah!  She didn't understand.  She must think of me as some kind of god, who turns on the sun in the morning and turns it off at night.  After all, I do this with room lights.  And the food I put in her dish does not come from a hunting act, but appears magically.  My girls say that I'm Sarah's favorite, with a tone of voice that conveys envy and jealousy; and I shrug it off as my being the one who feeds her, opens the sun room -  and, as I can now add, who turns on the sun!

This site opened:  May 22, 1999.   Last Update: May 23, 1999