“Feed me! Feed me! Feed me!”

At six this morning, the cat jumps on the bed and starts his “Feed me! I’m starving!” routine. As I stagger to the kitchen, fill the cup, and pour the dry food he prefers into his window ledge dish, the dog looks forlornly at me and starts smacking her lips. So I go to the back room and open the bin with the dry dog food, grab a can of luscious turkey, duck, and chicken mix canned food, open the drawer with her medicine bag in it and dole out one-and-a-half thyroid pills, half a painkiller for the hips, half a pill for her Addison’s disease and a whole anti-peeing-all-over-the-house pill and put them in a dish and grind them to powder with a kitchen knife handle, pour the powder onto the wet food and stir it in. I drag my old bones to her room and let her dive in. Soon she will finish, walk to the front door, stand there as if to be telepathically signaling that we should let her out, then after a minute or so of no response from us, let out a single loud bark. I let her out, fully expecting to soon hear another bark to let her back in.

Meanwhile I walk by the fountain and see five fish all lined up at the surface, staring longingly, waiting for me to pour some flakes of nourishment into the stream flowing in. They ravenously pursue each piece till they’ve disappeared. Buncha pint-sized sharks. I walk back to look out the kitchen window at the hummingbird feeder and see that it’s well stocked. The other feeder has maybe a cup of sweet sugar water, so I’m off the hook there. The feeder with bird seed in it (see repurposed spacecraft here) is still good. Whew! Done.

No, wait. Loud squawks bring my attention to another feeding job, the ravens. They have been with us for at least 20 years, maybe longer. They wait patiently in the oak tree by the back door while I go back to the bin with the dry dog food and grab a handful, then toss it onto an unfinished mosquito nursery and go back in the house. Immediately they’re clearing the food away and either eating it or burying it in the “yard” down the hill for later use. I hope they dig it up before nightfall or the marauding wild pigs will sniff it out and tear up the ground to get it. Or maybe the raccoons will find it, or the little fox, or the gray squirrels or ground squirrels or…

To me the whole world looks like a bunch of hungry mouths. Disgusting! I think I’ll go have breakfast now.