When I was young I used to be quite precise with information. As I get older I fear I'm getting wooly, and even wrong, so when I made an assertion of fact to Marie H the other day, I qualified it with, "But then I'm a guy who thinks that Darwin sailed on the Bounty."
    "It was the Beagle," said Marie.
    "Ah. Then I was close."
    "But no cigar," she said, and changed the subject. "Marie S tells me you are looking after the cat." Marie S is my ex-wife. I am attending her forty ninth-birthday party. I have recently returned the cat, Sativa, to her, and now the cat is ill. The cat is feisty and it takes two people to get her medicine into her, so I'm going over - it's nine years on, so at last it feels cool - I'm going over once a day to help dose the cat. And now I have just met Marie H at Marie S's party and we talk a bit about the cat.
    When I left Marie S, Sativa, who had been an outdoor cat for nine years, stopped going out until I would come round (to pick up this or pay that bill). Only then, when I was in the house, would she go out. I took this to mean that she was waiting for me;, that she was too "anxious" about my absence to go out and risk missing me, and in my recollection, that was why I then took her to live with me first in my room and then with my new partner. But now I have a glib thought. "Ah," said I, sparked by my Bounty Beagle misapprehension. "Maybe I got it arse backwards. Maybe she went out when I came round because she didn't want to be with me."
    A while late, Marie H and I were the only guests left, sitting with Marie S. Marie S and I gave the cat her medicine and then I tried to explain my new "insight" to Marie S, my ex. "I don't understand," said Marie S. Marie H explained more clearly. "But it wasn't like that," said Marie S. "Sativa was always your cat. Oh I know, I adopted her, but she's was always drawn to men. She likes deep voices. No. I knew I was moving to an apartment and at that time I felt there was no space for a cat. Those were the reasons I gave her to you."
    Well, I still think it was because Sativa wouldn't go out until I went round, but then I'm the guy who thinks that Darwin sailed on the Bounty.