There are many things we didn’t, and still don’t, know about Winston and cats in general. What do three meows mean when they are followed by a bite? Is that the same as two meows and a bite? They both probably mean “feed me,” but who really knows? Over the years, we have learned a lot. Some things we’ve learned seem obvious now. They were not always so obvious though.

A couple weeks after we got Winston, we were sitting on Sarah’s couch staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. She glanced over my shoulder and her eyes opened wide in panic. She whispered, “Uh-oh. He’s headed for the corner.”

“So?” I was confused.

“Well, what if he gets stuck?” She was very concerned at this point.

“Stuck? Why would he get stuck?” I was still confused.

“He can’t go backward, so if he goes into the corner he’ll get stuck.” This was accompanied by a look that seemed to ask, “Don’t you know anything about cats?”

“So, you don’t think Winston can go backward?” I raised my eyebrows at this point to be dramatic.

“No. He can’t. I’ve never seen him go backward.” This was fact, not speculation.

Despite Sarah’s firm belief that cats lacked the ability to walk backward, Winston did, can and quite often does go backward. Perhaps he’s just highly evolved for his species, but one would think that going backward would be one of those necessary instincts in life. Certainly, it seems more necessary and obvious than his normal backflip three feet in the air to catch a fast moving bird toy in his paws and land upright with it in his mouth.

But, then again penguins can’t fly, so maybe it’s not too far fetched to believe cats can’t walk backward.

Greg and I tend to be in sync to a frightening degree. If we get dressed in the morning without seeing each other, we inevitably both put on jeans and a gray sweater or khakis and a red shirt. We’ve had people ask us if we’re matching on purpose. Sometimes we converse wtihout talking. I will start to ask a question, and Greg will respond before I ask.
“Did you …”
“Yes.”
“But I didn’t ask the question.”
“But I already know the question.”
Somehow, when we visit a store with aisles, all of this synchronicity breaks down. Take us into a Home Depot, Wal-Mart, or grocery store, and we lose track of each other within minutes.
When we went grocery shopping last night, I stopped at the deli counter to buy ham while Greg went to get some cereal. It took several minutes to get the ham. I checked the cereal aisle, but Greg wasn’t there. I knew we only had a few things left on our shopping list, so I cruised over to the orange juice area, then the dental floss area. No Greg. The half-pound of ham was starting to feel like a whole side of pig. It was 8 p.m., and I still hadn’t eaten dinner. Greg had the cart, and my purse was in the cart, so I didn’t have my cell phone. I couldn’t call Greg, which is how we sometimes escape these idiotic situations. I strolled back past the orange juice and over to the deli counter, figuring Greg might have gone there to wait for me. Nope. I started getting angry. What was wrong with this guy? He knew I was buying ham, so why didn’t he come back to the deli counter to get me? How can an engineer be so illogical? Grrrr!
I finally found Greg back in the cereal aisle.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I got cereal and then went by the deli counter and up front by the dental floss, thinking you might be there, but you weren’t. So I came back here,” he said.
“Well, you got the other stuff on the list so we can leave now, right?”
“No. All I got was the cereal.”
Double grrrr!

It is the end of the world. Not really, but it might be if you were to ride in the car with Sarah at night.

As part of our move to the great Lone Star state of Texas, Sarah got a new driver’s license. But, the vision test didn’t go as well as anyone would have hoped. It turned out that she couldn’t read any letters with her left eye, unless she wore her glasses. So, now the phrase, “Must wear corrective lenses” adorns Sarah’s driver’s license. She only had reading glasses though. Obviously, all the squirrels in the neighborhood were now in mortal danger, unless they happened to actually be on the hood of the car with a book by Bill Bryson.

The next day at work, I asked around for recommendations for an optometrist and got a few. Sarah made an appointment. I took a couple hours off work to drive her there. Sitting in the waiting room, I flipped through some old magazines on housekeeping and read a few jokes from a Reader’s Digest magazine that was hidden beneath some advertisements for glasses. Sarah eventually came out from the doctor’s office and went to pick out the frames and lenses that she would be getting.

As she was finishing up, I joined her to get the details. The frame “expert” went over the pricing and how much we saved since we had insurance. Frankly, I was more concerned with how much we were spending rather than saving. But, everything looked good. Sarah got the receipt and was told to come back in about a week to pick up the glasses.

As we were walking out, I asked her what she had gotten. She told me about the frames and how she went with the tinted glasses because there aren’t many clouds down here and she could use them as sunglasses too. I paused a little before I asked the question that seemed so obvious to me, “If you got the sunglasses, how are you going to drive at night?”

God save the squirrels.