Greg and I have often asserted that Winston is the smartest cat in the world. Some people appear skeptical about this claim. Well, yesterday Winston took a big pounce forward for cat-kind. We think he’s well on his way to becoming a computer engineer.

I walked into the office to check my e-mail, and as usual, Winston was sleeping in my office chair. Something was amiss though. My computer was off. I nearly always leave my computer running.

“Greg, did you turn off my computer?” I called.

“No,” Greg said.

“Well, it’s off,” I said.

I moved Winston from the chair and sat down, dumbfounded. Greg walked into the office and glanced at the power strip.

“Winston,” he said in a scolding tone, “Did you turn off Sarah’s computer?”

Greg told me that Winston had stepped on the power switch of the power strip. Greg flipped it back on, and my computer started to boot. But Winston wasn’t going to have it. With both Greg and I watching, and with his tail swaying arrogantly from side to side, he walked over to my computer and stepped on the power switch again. My computer went silent.

I don’t know what Greg and I are going to do with this creature. He’s faster than us. He’s tougher than us. And it appears that he is rapidly becoming smarter than us.

Check out that tongue!

Goof.

Blue bonnets all alone.

Sometimes life moves too fast, especially for a man trying to photograph a terrier.

Near Greg’s office, lies a pond. Around this pond, lies a trail. On this trail, lie some ducks. I went jogging on this trail a few days ago, something I rarely do. As I approached the ducks — three females and three males — I slowed my jogging because they weren’t moving. I expected them to fly, or at least waddle, away from me. I’m a little nervous around foul because I was bitten by a swan when I was a toddler. Fortunately, he bit me on my diapered bottom. At any rate, I didn’t want one of these ducks to peck me as I tried to jog past.

I got closer and closer until it became obvious that these ducks would not budge. One of the male ducks sat a few feet from the rest of the flock. He seemed to be the lookout duck.

“Aren’t you going to move?!” I shouted at the ducks, hoping this would spur them to action.

Lookout Duck gave me the evil eye.

“Quack, quack,” he said.

This is the first time in my life that a duck has directly addressed me. As you can gather from his response, the ducks did not move. But they didn’t peck me either as I ran within inches of their bills. I did two more laps past them and heard nary a peep from Lookout Duck. So we lived happily ever after.