We all saw the dust this morning. I noticed the cat looking at the particles floating down the streams of sunshine and then I looked at them too. Then he came over and sat on the couch to put his socks on and softly muttered, “Dust.” I was happy that for a moment, life was slow enough that all three of us had shared in taking note of the smallest specks of beauty.

The best breakfasts happen in the afternoon. It means that you’ve slowly rolled out of bed, maybe getting up to get the newspaper and then getting back underneath the covers to read it. It means that you’ve allowed the hunger in your belly to slowly cultivate itself into a growling craving demanding attention. Somewhere between reading the Metro section in the Oregonian and starting the crossword puzzle, you realize that you need to venture out from the warmth of your bed to seek out the endless delicious combinations of eggs and bready buttery sides in the city, and baptize them in coffee. You need this to live.

The possibilities are limitless. Should you try a new place, like that new café that’s been getting rave reviews in the Willamette Week, or just stick with a tried and true favorite, knowing that you want to relive the experience of say, the scone you had at the Cup and Saucer a month ago? You argue with yourself- if you never try anything new, than you might never have discovered the Big Egg Portlander egg sandwich with it’s thick strips of bacon flavored with mustard and chives and oozing with yolky goodness. But then again, if you are really just craving that perfect croissant at Petite Provence, then nothing else may fill that hole in your heart today.

So you trudge onward, getting dressed and facing the outside world. It’s cold and raining outside, but you know that it will be worth it in the end. When you get there, you see the line of people outside and sigh. But you join the masses under the awning, huddling together to avoid the drizzle. Luckily, there is the consolation of fresh brewed coffee outside. You pour yourself a cup and warm your cold hands around the mug. You wait contentedly watching the steam swirl upwards from your coffee and fantasize about the selections on the menu.

When the hostess finally calls your name to be seated, you’ve already scanned all the selections of food being eaten by patrons sitting by the window and narrowed down your selection. But as the hostess leads you to your table, you walk past other dishes that you hadn’t seen while you were waiting outside, and suddenly you feel confused and overwhelmed by what you should order.

Luckily, the friends who are with you are sympathetic to your plight and agree to share several of the dishes with you. You sigh happily in your seat and think about how excited you are right now, drinking coffee with friends, waiting for many different plates of breakfast to be brought to you.

And then she comes like an angel arising from the steam of the kitchen. On her hands are floating several trays of food that inch nearer and nearer to your table. You hope that she will stop in front of your booth, and she does.

The first bites are always the best. Perfectly cooked eggs mixed with melted cream cheese with smoked salmon. Buttery, syrupy pancakes with little packets of blueberries that burst inside your mouth.

You lean back in your seat, feeling warm and full, and watch the rain drizzle down the windows. It’s been a good day so far and you’ve only just had breakfast.

I’ve always wanted to have a dog. As a kid, I would write letters to Santa year after year imploring him to leave a puppy for me on Christmas morning. He never did, and after several years, I stopped expecting him to. But I still asked. Now that I am an adult, it is in my fullest capability to become a dog owner. I have the resources, the space, the power over my destiny to make my childhood dream come true.

But I don’t own a dog because he hasn’t found me yet.

On the other hand, I have been found my many cats. And this, my dear reader, is what the guiding principle in my life of pets has always been – I have always been found by a pet. They have always just walked into my life, and that is how I know that they are meant to be in my life.

My first cat, a black temperamental cat we called Olby, was a stray who wandered into our yard in Pensacola, Florida after my mom prayed with my sister and I that a witch would send us a black cat. (That’s another topic for a more theological time, but that’s how the story goes). My second cat, a white docile Persian cat named MiMi, was the foil to Olby and came to our family when his owner decided to give him up.

And while it might be debatable whether or not my third cat, Xiao Hei, came to me or was procured by me, there is no doubt in my mind that the hand of Providence guided him into our home. Technically, he walked up to a friend and I in a friendly manner one hot muggy day in the summer outside of the college campus where we were taking summer classes. In fact, he was so friendly, that we were compelled to try and rescue him from the animal traps that we had seen placed in the parking lot where he greeted us. Perhaps you might think the main point of my essay controversial if I told you that we ended up picking him up and throwing him in the back of my parents’ minivan that day, rescuing him from a potential extermination by the city animal control. Scoff not, but hear out the rest of my story.

As friendly as he was to us on his territory, his sudden abduction into a nauseating fast moving vehicle changed his temperament. After we parked the minivan into the garage, he became very frightened and ran out the door to hide within the mess of stuff in the garage. After no avail to coax him out, it was someone’s brilliant idea to open the garage door. Of course he ran out in a streak of tabby stripes, and of course we could not follow his high speed flight of fear. We looked for several hours, asking neighbours if they had seen a cat running by, looking behind bushes, even venturing into a cluttered yard of a hoarder.

We never found him that day. I thought that it would be near impossible to find this cat. And, even if we did find him, it would be even more difficult to coax him out of wherever he was hiding, now that we had scared him.

But I prayed. Fervently. In a way that I would not be able to pray today. That is, I prayed, really believing that God cared about this trivial detail in my life and believing that He had the power to bring this cat back to me. Yes, despite knowing that there were other prayers being submitted to God, like people praying for their lives in war torn countries, and starving children imploring God for food, I thought that God might find it in His will to do this one thing for me.

And He did. Or depending on your belief system, it happened, despite the odds. A week after the abduction, when I had given up all hope of seeing the cat again, a neighbor down the street saw the cat in some bushes near his house and coaxed him out with some pieces of meat. This neighbour had happened to be outside in his driveway when we were looking for the cat a week ago and we had approached him asking him if he had seen a tabby cat. Knowing that we had been looking for a lost cat, he came to our house and told us the good news. And that is how Xiao Hei became the happy grandcat of my parents that he is today, living in regal comfort in their empty nest.

My fourth cat, Mufassa, was a big boned cat who was unwanted by his owners and brought into our apartment by my sister as a suprise birthday present for me in medical school.

And lastly, my fifth and current cat, Max, followed me home one night as a kitten the first year that I moved to Portland, OR to start my residency in family medicine. I tried to run away from him when he started to follow me, because I was not sure that I should own a pet due to my many work hours away from home. But when I closed the door to my apartment, and reopened it a few minutes later, I could still see him with his paws leaning against the glass planes of the doorway trying to get into the foyer. In those minutes that I closed the door on him, I inwardly told myself that I could keep him if he was still there when I opened the door. And when I opened the door and saw him still there, I knew we were supposed to be together.

I did have a dog, briefly, for a day or two. My sister and I were in elementary school walking around the block selling chocolate for school (side note- who lets their kids walk around alone anymore going door to door to strangers homes?) and this dog with dark curly hair liked our chocolate and followed us home. We led him into our backyard and closed the fence door, and for a day, I was as happy as a clam with a pet dog. We named him Brownie. The next day, my sister opened the fence door and he left. I’m not actually sure if it was my sister’s doing, but I blame her to this day for undoing the one chance I had for a pet dog.

And so, I am waiting for my dog to come to me. In the meantime, I can’t help but wonder why Providence has sent so many cats into my life. Perhaps cats were built into my temperament when my celestial DNA was put together. Or perhaps the issue of lost cats and a sad girl is just easier to solve than the bigger problem of a billion hungry people in the world.

I was disappointed to hear that Peter Jennings had died. When my sister and I were growing up, Peter Jennings was always there in our living room. It didn't matter if we were home or not at 5:30 pm when his show aired on Channel 3 in Pensacola, Florida. Even in the eighties, my dad used his clunky large VCR in a way that would rival TIVO even now. With the autorecord function and VHS tapes, Peter Jennings was available at any hour of the evening in our home to report the daily world news. Consequently, he became a part of our daily routine. Almost every evening, the opening theme song of "World News Tonight" would be played, and the voice of Peter Jennings would follow, wafting through the air of our home, just as the smells of our mom's cooking had earlier in the evening.

I was sad to hear that Peter Jennings had died, but I think I was more disappointed -- disappointed that Peter Jennings was as mortal as the rest of humankind. When I was growing up, he never seemed to age. And he had a type of god-like quality to him, in that he always seemed to know exactly where I was to look directly at me. I remember my sister and I trying to hide behind the sofa in an effort to evade his persistent gaze at us. But always, just as soon as I peeked around the soft yellow fabric of the sofa, he caught me in a glance and continued to look and speak directly at me.

Now, of course, having watched the memorial specials on TV since his death, I realize that he had indeed visibly aged, from the time the Challenger exploded, to the time when he announced with his uncharacteristically raspy voice, that he had lung cancer. And of course, his omnipresent manner of staring right at me was merely a function of him looking directly at the camera lens.

In effect, I probably knew all of that growing up, that he didn't really have superpowers. Nevertheless, Peter Jennings was special to me.

When I was away at college and medical school in Miami and too busy for any regular TV schedule, there was nothing like hearing the voice of Peter Jennings on "World News Tonight" to make me feel safe and comforted, as if I was back at home in our living room, with Dad asleep on the couch, waiting for dinner. Peter Jennings gave us a sense of routine--it was a weekday if he was on, a Friday if he was introducing the Person of the Week, and a weekend if we didn't see him on TV.

Whenever I found myself in someone else's living room, and some other news program was on TV, with some other news reporter, I always felt deep down that I was somehow getting the inferior news. I have no intention of offending the other newsreporters and respect their work, but it was almost like having a strong preference for Coke,and having to drink Pepsi. The loyalty could not he helped-- it was established deep in the roots of childhood.

I stopped watching Peter Jennings regularly long before he died. Busy schedules and lack of Tivo like equipment or ability kept me from doing so. Even so, several months ago, I did hear that Peter Jennings had lung cancer. I also heard that he planned to be back on the air after treatment. That optimistic announcement kept me from feeling sad, and brought a sense of stability and of safety, sort of like the feeling that there is always a home you can go back to, where there is routine and predictability.

Maybe that is why I felt disapointment along with my sadness when I heard Peter Jennings had died this week.I believed him when he said that he would be back, because he was the Peter Jennings who was always there in my living room, always speaking directly to me.