Sadie and Mac, Our Live-In Crazies

Sadie and Mac are our family animals, not counting George our desert tortoise who is presently hibernating. Sadie is a gray tabby about eleven years old that we inherited from our daughter, Carlee, three or four years ago when her husband’s asthma and allergies started getting serious. Sadie was adopted from an animal shelter when Carlee went solo with her first apartment.

As a kitten Sadie was pretty playful, chasing ping pong balls in the bathtub, tossing milk jug tabs, and unraveling toilet paper rolls. She’s still pretty active and will often attach my knitting or weaving yarns if they show any suspicious movements. This year when we came home we discovered Sadie playing with a little silver lizard in the dining room. The second time the lizard appeared in the house it was minus a tail. It seems to have survived as we’ve picked it up and put it back outside a couple of times during the summer.

Sadie is a live-in alarm clock, but not regular enough to be dependable. Around 6 AM Sadie will jump on the bed near my head and start loudly purring. If I’m really lucky, I’m laying facing her and she will start touching my face with her paw or butting me with her wet nose. I think she just wants someone to wake up and feed her.

Every time I sit down in my chair ready to watch TV and knit, Sadie runs over and tries to stretch out on my chest. Needless to say it is hard to knit with a cat lying on your arm. So we battle it out for about 5 minutes until she get discouraged and curls up next to me and goes to sleep.


Mac is our Heinz 57 mixed breed dog. We named her after Sarah Mac Kinsey, the TV JAG character, so we could call her Mac. She is the neighborhood dog and often makes the rounds on Saturdays greeting the neighbors when everyone is outside doing their chores. She is such a terrific watchdog that we often have to wake her up when we come home. But when we have visitors she is right there to greet them because she knows that they’ve all come to play with her. Thank goodness Mac isn’t a big barker, but she does like to talk to you with her special howling language. I always feel like she’s trying to tell me something, but I’m just not getting the translation.

Mac really loves water, maybe she’s part Lab. Last week we got lots of rain, more than all of last year. During the steady rain here was Mac standing out in the middle of the backyard just staring back at us in the house, like we were missing out on something. Strange. During the summer when we take walks around the neighborhood and come upon a lawn sprinkler working, Mac would stand over the sprinkler until we pull her away. Probably felt pretty good.

Now we’ve noticed that the cat is starting to eat Mac’s dog food, and Mac has taken some of Sadie’s food when the dish was too close to the edge of the table. How soon can we expect the cat to start barking and the dog to start purring?