Years ago, it was said that an intellectual is someone who can listen to Rossini's "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger.  More recently, the same could be said of someone who hears Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" without being reminded of Allen Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh."

   Now, Pat has come up with her own lyric to that tune.  The reason is that as part of the cats' daily routine they go outside in the yard during the morning, chaperoned by either or both of us to make sure they don't get into trouble.  The cats like the outdoors so much that, to give them more incentive to come in, we began to give them their daily serving of canned food immediately after they're back inside.

   The first step is for Pat to start singing, just loud enough for the cats to hear, "Cats are hungry / Cats are starving / Very hungry / very starving."  There isn't any more to it than that, but then, there doesn't have to be any more.  The cats quickly picked up on Pat's Pavlovian intentions, so when she serenades them, they almost always start making their way toward the door to be let back in.

   Every so often on a nice day a cat happens to be enjoying the moment so much that it doesn't respond right away.  However, Pat is prepared with a Plan B flip side that always gets the straggler moving.  That's because -- even though our cats can't be described as longhairs in any sense of the word -- no cat is tone-deaf to the sweet sounds of the clank of a spoon making contact with a can of cat food and the clink of the spoon against a bowl.