On a random winter evening I can hear one of the chairs in the living room, wham, wham, wham as it slams back and forth on its’ rockers. When I go to investigate, I see Erma the cat, wide-eyed, fur roughed up on her back standing a bit askew and motionless before she jumps back into action and takes off down the hall, thump thumping at a dead run. She had been the cause the runaway chair because she just couldn’t help herself; she was somehow controlled by an unseen force.

Soon she runs back again, stopping in the middle of the floor, looking around as if expecting a monster to appear. Sure enough, one does. Under her feet is an imaginary thing only she can see, and she leaps in the air swatting at it below her in triple time before racing into the bedroom where she runs across the bed, then burns a “U” to set up for another run down the hall. Her sister Edna, being half blind looks on trying to focus on the commotion not yet having been bit by the low-pressure system her sister apparently is enduring.

Erm seems under a spell she can’t escape and stops mid-gallop to do a little break dancing where she does a few somersaults and sudden spins on her back, somehow managing one back foot thrown over her head looking a little like a pretzel in motion. She completes her dance and leaps high in the air landing at a full run, tail resembling a shepherd’s cane.

No one knows what goes through their minds, but cats are the best barometers there are. A day or two before a storm the action begins, first with bad attitudes toward each other and then onto the shenanigans. In short, they go a bit nuts. Running a little sideways at first, then launching into full blown berserk.

When I was a kid, the school bus was abuzz with excitement as a low-pressure system approached. All the kids were talking non-stop and at once, not bothering to pause for a breath. The bullies were picking at quieter personalities when the driver was not watching his mirror, and at their individual stops the kids virtually ran off the bus. It was a chaotic scene at times.

We are all affected by the changing pressures it seems. I know I don’t sleep as well with a coming storm, and certainly the cats don’t. I noticed the deer fighting with each other the other day preceding the current storm. One, with ears flat was striking at his herd mate and another was head butting his buddy and at least the former was not playing. Perhaps they too are over the cold and wet as we humans are at times, or maybe simply tired of pawing through the snow for every twig; tempers are thin and expectations are high.

It is a wonder our furniture survives all the ebb and flow of barometric pressure. Every storm sets off at least some volume of antics with the two cats. It could be worse, in our former home we had one cat that would run up the stairs and leap from there onto a hanging plant that hung from the vaulted ceiling ten feet from the floor of the room below.

I do not remember her name, but she was certainly a trapeze artist in her former life. You know of course, cats have nine lives and she was going to use them all. The cat would hit the first landing on the stairs, skid around the corner and up the second flight. She never slowed down, but jumped through the slats on the side of the stairs, then fully three feet out landing in that plant. She would look so smug as she swung back and forth laying in the center of the pot. That cat didn’t just do it a few times, she made the leap dozens of times until she managed to kill the plant and I finally took the mutilated core down.

Looking from the outside in, one might get the impression cats are delusional, but who are we say? Maybe they are, but in my view so are our modern weather forecasters thinking they can nail a storm with so many geographic influences. Animals, particularly cats give you a solid view of what the weather might hold, and they eat less than your local meteorologist.