My furry barometer

I miss Joey. My enormous gray and white tomcat had the hugest heart and was always a joy to be around. But besides that, he was excruciatingly sensitive to weather.

I often knew when there was a tornado warning before the weatherman told me, because Joey would scoot -- as close to the ground as he could get -- into the windowless hallway. Really, he looked like a crawling meatloaf. But he knew.

And he snapped out of it as soon as the storm passed. As though he could tell time and understood the weatherman. He would regain his legs, get up and go about his usual lazy, loving life.