communication

It was bright outside and light was streaming through my bedroom window. I had just turned over and put the pillow over my head to add a few more minutes of treasured darkness when something like a finger poked me in the nose. I don't remember what I was dreaming, but the poke ended it quickly and sat me straight up, ready to run. I sleep with earplugs so I never heard it coming. Whatever was poking me now had me!
Well my fear turned to anger when I realized it was my cat. "Are you up?" said the look on her face. I don't know if I swore out loud (another benefit of earplugs), but I think she got the gist of a few choice words. Well luckily PJ was getting up for work about this time so the cat turned her attention to another subject. An easier mark. They left the room and I replaced the light filtering pillow to it's respected position. I tried to doze a little longer but it was too late, the damage was done.
A few cups of coffee later and it's mid morning. The cat is asleep outside with the full stomach she told me she needed at six AM. Time to wake Taylor up so I enlist the help of my dog. "Lets check on Chickie" I say, as I do every morning, rain or shine. He jumps up and heads to the door of the room upstairs. He waits for me to open it, then dashes upstairs. Dash being a relative term for a 10+ year old border collie, maybe 'proceeds' would be better. As he walks up the stairs he shakes his head to make the tags on his collar jingle. At the top of the stairs he makes a noise that is half whine and half growl, a canine good morning. I can see Taylor begin to stir before we get to the edge of her bed, and she too puts the pillow over her head. We are both up now, thanks to the work of our pets.
As I head downstairs I think about just how effective the communication skills of these animals are. No dancing around the subject or sugar coating the obvious, just simple logic. Pets don't have and electric alarm clock with battery back up, they have a natural one. They have the engines of our ancestors that slept in caves and rose when the sun came up. They get tired, they sleep. They get hungry, they eat. They are creatures of habit and they expect the same from you. But above all, when they have a want or need, they communicate it perfectly, you just have to listen.
Our twenty first century lives have become much more complicated than those of our ancestors. It seems crazy to apply the logic of a dog to the life of say, an attorney or a banker, but the basic interactions are the same. If another dog walks past my house, my dog barks. We assume this is agression, but how do we know that? What he really said was "here I am and there you are, I see you". The obvious. The logical. There are enough mysteries without adding more.
If you are hungry, eat. If you want your spouse to take you out to eat, ask them. If you love someone, tell them. Life is too short to assume that others understand your true feelings. If you want them to wake up, poke them in the nose.