Keep menu open for node pages not in the menu?

Hi, thanks for a fantastic module! This might be more of a general Drupal question but since I'm using this module for my main nav menu sitewide, I figured I would ask it here. Please let me know if I should post it somewhere else.

I would like the menu to stay open when I view a node that is not a menu item. For example, let's say I have "Animals" as a parent menu item. So I click "Animals" and I see Cats, Dogs, and Horses as children of the Animals link.

So I click "Cats" and I see a list of Cat Node Pages. When I click on a particular Cat I go to the Node page for that Cat, but I still have the jQuery menu in the sidebar of the page, and of course it collapses completely because that Node is not in the menu.

Is there a way to have the menu remain open to "Cats" while I am viewing a Cat page, and remain open to "Dogs" when I am viewing a Dog page? This would be tremendously helpful and would make me look very good to my boss. :-)

Thanks for any help and thanks again for a great module... we use it all the time.
Tim