Feeding Time at the Zoo!       We have a menagerie. A golden retriever named Maggie, four cats of assorted breeds (Indy, Casey, Jessie and Taz), two newts named Copperfield and Samwise, and many saltwater and freshwater fish. I guess you could say we are animal lovers. In our home though, it is definitely a matter of the animals running the zoo... they have trained their humans well! Every day at precisely two o'clock, the cats begin to jump into our laps, rub against our legs and meow incessantly. This is because Bart started the tradition of "afternoon snacktime" about a year ago (NOT that they didn't already get two square meals a day!!) Now it is nearly impossible to skip a day. The cats drive us absolutely bananas until we drop a small handful of dry food into their bowls. Heaven forbid we run out of dry food! I wonder how long it would take them to start gnawing on our bones if we didn't get them any. :-) Maggie is a little less demanding in her attitude, but still has her humans trained. She is very much our child. She has an entire bin full of stuffed animals and squeaky toys at her disposal and her humans play with her, brush her and cuddle her several hours a day. She has her ways of making her needs known to us... If she needs to go out she rarely has to resort to scratching at the door, all she has to do is look at us a certain way. I am beginning to think she communicates telepathically! As for the newts and the fish...they are not so interactve, but we sure spend a LOT of time cleaning aquariums. With a 55 gallon saltwater tank, a 20 gallon saltwater tank, a 29 gallon freshwater tank with a waterfall (for the newts), and 20 gallon and 10 gallon freshwater fish tanks it sometimes seems like we are running a pet store! And speaking of pet stores...Petsmart and The Aquarium love us; we make frequent "donations" to them. Yes, our animals are spoiled, they each have their own webpage (and Jessie even has her own blog!) Click on the links below to see our "children's" pages: Maggie's Page The Cats' Page The Newts' Page The Fish page