Luci's diary: I can celebrate a birthday even if I don't understand it

Luci's Diary. I haven’t the faintest idea what a birthday is, but hey, who isn’t into celebration?

5 November

Today’s my birthday!

I have no idea what that means. Except that it’s mine, and I know what that means.

My cat Misty tried to explain.

“OK. Things go round in years,” he said.

I looked around the room. Everything seemed to be standing still.

“Nothing’s going round,” I carefully explained to him.

“No, OK. Not like that. Right now it’s cold and the leaves are red. In a while there won’t be any leaves at all and it’ll be colder still. And then the leaves will come back again, all bright green. And after that it’ll be quite hot again. Well, since we live in England, it’ll be quite hot when it isn’t cold and raining, but that’ll be pretty often. OK, let’s say quite often. More often than now, at any rate.”

It was coming back to me.

“Yes, I remember,” I said, “when things were like that.”

“Well, that’s it. That’s what I mean. Those things come, and then they go, and then they come again. So when the leaves are red, that’s autumn, and that’s how they were when you were born. They’re red again now – autumn’s come back – and it’s your birthday: a year since you were born.”

Born? What was he getting at? I’ve always been here. I can’t remember any time when I wasn’t here.

But Misty was still explaining.

“It’s your birthday. Your birthday’s here because autumn’s back. You’re an autumn dog. Each time things come back like that, a year goes by. You’ve had one year, you’re going to have another one now, and that means you’ll have all those things happen again.”

Luci, the autumn dog

I nodded and tried to look as if I’d understood. But I was still baffled. How can things happen again? I mean, I met Misty for the first time, ages and ages ago. Am I going to meet him for the first time – again? How can that make sense?

Oh well, I’ll just have to see how things work out. I often find that’s the best thing to do, because lots of things don’t make sense to me.

Like the other day. My human number 1 was all dressed to go out. So I was jumping around her waiting for her to put my lead on. And then she said to human number 2:

“I’ll just pop out then. I’ll be back shortly to take Luci out.”

Where’s the sense in that? Coming back in to take me out? Why not just take me out straight away? Honestly. Humans do talk a lot of rubbish sometimes.

That was almost as bad as finding Misty eating my food last weekend. His food is kept up high because he can jump all the way up there, and I can’t. But my food is kept down at ground level. Basically for the same reason. The trouble is that he can get at my food even though I can’t get at his. Which was only fair because he didn’t like my food.

Part of my food is this super good “eat me, eat me, eat me” mix of rice and bits of meat my number 2 human makes for me. Ah, one of the great joys of the day is when he puts out my portion for me. And it lasts me right through to just before we go to bed.

Well, Misty decided to have some of it the other day. My best meal. Now that wasn’t supposed to happen. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first.

It didn’t make sense, so I decided to make sense of it. I jumped on top of him. That often makes sense of things that seem incomprehensible. I’m getting quite good at it. He complains but he puts up with it.

“OK, OK,” he said, “you can get off me. I’ll stop eating your stuff. I don’t like it anyway.”

It may have helped that Number 2 was having a go too.

“Misty! Eat your own food. Leave Luci’s alone!”

So things got back to normal. I suppose the same will happen with this “year” thing Misty was talking about. It’ll start to seem normal after a while. I’ll get used to it.

Meanwhile, it’s my birthday! I’m going to enjoy it.

“There’ll be extra rice and turkey mince for you,” Human number 2 told me.

Birthday Treat

Yay!