"Pet Tails": the latest in dinner-theater

They say that owners begin to look and act like their pets after a while. Me? I think its more like the pets begin to look and act like their owners.

One of the things I have to do with my cats is sometimes watch them when they go to eat new food in their dish because I have learned that Tabby has a tendency to eat too much and too quickly. For whatever reason she does it, if I don't stop her after a few seconds she will eat too much and then wander off and within about 5 minutes she'll vomit. But if I can control how much she first eats, then I usually can prevent this getting sick.

However, in the past several weeks I have begun to notice something that is rather unusual. I've had Porkey and Tabby since fall of 2001. Athena since spring of 2002. Whiskers since late summer 2004, and Sylvester since spring of 2005. All of a sudden it seems in the past 2 or 3 months or something, at night I will get home and go to eat supper. And for whatever reason.....

I'll have an audience as I eat supper. I will be sitting on the couch enjoying my supper of whatever food I have cooked, and usually I'll have one or two or three cats sitting on the floor in front of me in various positions ... watching me. Seriously, they're just sitting there watching me. Usually one of the cats, mostly Whiskers, will get up on the couch beside me. He'll lay down in a comfortable position and just observe me from a closer position.

Once in a while one of the three, most of the time either Whiskers or Sylvester, will attempt to just get right in close at my plate. I'm sitting right there and my face is right there and they're daring to get in close like that to my plate??

This is like a bad-version of a entertainment dinner theater. Except... I'm not only the one eating the food, but I am the one being watched for the entertainment.