About one out of every five times I walk the dog, our cat Cromwell insists on joining us. He slows us down, and repeatedly disappears into the brush for long minutes conducting feline business. We wait impatiently, then abandon him. And he emerges, meowing loud complaints from behind, as if to say “You dicks! You can’t wait FIVE MINUTES so I can catch a bird?!” And he sprints to rejoin us. And after five or six of these episodes, the dog gets cranky, and she nips at him to show him that this is *not* how The Walk is done. And the whole time I’m wondering, do I look uncool walking this cat? And we traverse the wide field by my house together, like we’re in some lame reboot of The Incredible Journey. Except instead of a cat and two dogs, we’re a cat, a dog, and a sexy beast.