My parents were “birders.” They took me with them to watch and count birds. I enjoyed being outside with them and with the other “birders.”

We had a bird feeding shelf outside the kitchen window. We shoveled the driveway in front of the house in winter and spread birdseed on it. The kitchen window was a great place to watch the cardinals, juncos, tufted titmouse (or is it titmice, titmouses?), lots of sparrows and grackles, blue jays.

My mom opened our home to a baby grackle that had fallen from its nest, who we named PeeWee. A smoker at the time, my mom would get a cigarette out of her pack and PeeWee grabbed it by the filtered end and walked around the porch table with it in his beak. A picture of Peewee, my mom and the unlit cigarette on the front page of our town’s newspaper! PeeWee was the talk of the town.

Research says that people’s love for animals acts as a bridge to build relationships with others.

This was true when I recently went for a doctor appointment and somehow the subject of my cats came up with the nurse, who also had a cat. While waiting for the doctor and nurse to come back into the examination room, I quickly scanned through my photos and pulled out a picture of each cat.

When the two came in, I held out my phone to the nurse and showed her pictures of Sox, Noodle, Claire and Honey.

“I want to see,” the doctor said as she leaned over my phone.

The nurse told how her cat pees while perched on the toilet. The doctor said, “My cat pees in the sink!”

“My Claire does that, too!”

Minutes before I had to pee in a cup! Strangely enough the doctor told me my bladder was good. So we ended my exam with more words about our cats’ behaviors and I was on my way, smiling because I actually had a pleasant doctor appointment, a fun one built around the love of our cats.

During a vaccination clinic for dogs and cats last year, the people in line shared stories about the animals they brought in. I, of course, told how Honey and two of her siblings were abandoned by a neighbor who moved. I brought Honey to the clinic for her follow-up shots. One woman told how she rescued seven kittens. She lifted the towel on top of the cat carrier and all seven of the darling kittens looked at me with wide eyes. No wonder she rescued them.

People love to talk about their animals. My friend Mabel and her husband Bart adopted an elderly German Shepherd a few years ago after his owner died. Wapo is now about 14 years old. Bart went back East for a week and didn’t sneeze once while there, he stopped itching and wasn’t congested. After being home for a few hours, back with Mabel and Wapo, all those issues came back. “It’s Wapo,” Mabel said. “But there’s no way we would rehome him. He’s like a big cat. He sleeps in one spot, wakes for pat on his head, then burrows into his other bed, always near us. He’s even friendly to the mailman. We will keep him to the end of his life and Bart will just have to take allergy meds.”

What’s a girl to do?…I let a stray calico cat sleep on my back porch but I can’t, I just can’t adopt her. If she starts looking thin, I might leave some food out for her, but then the rogue tomcat might start hanging out. A conundrum!

Lucy Llewellyn Byard welcomes comments and shares. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com