The fortune-teller told me I was going to come into a large sum of money soon. She told me my love life would continue to be happy and satisfying. She said my health would be vigorous. But then she looked worried. She said there was some kind of large cat in my near future—a cougar. And that cat would surprise me when I least expected it. And that, of course, cancelled out all the previous good news. I paid her and left her dirty, little storefront. I looked up and down the street, checked out the rooftops. Once home, I kissed Jo, and headed for my study where I looked up Cougar. Six to eight feet in length, 160 lbs., can drag five times their weight, can leap twenty feet in one bound, jump from sixty feet above the ground. I debated telling Jo. I knew she would ridicule me. Then I went back in the kitchen and told her. She stared at me in disgust, incapable of even finding words at first. Then she said, “You went to a fortune-teller? And you believe this outrageous crap about a cougar? And all these years I thought I was married to a sensible man. What happened to you, Ralph? Are you on drugs? Have you been drinking?” “Weirder things have happened,” I said. “Last week a man exploded in Chicago, spontaneous combustion, walking down the street. There were witnesses. It was in the paper. There used to be cougars in these parts, only they called them catamounts or mountain lions. There could be one left, has a thing for me.” “You’re not serious, are you, because, if you are, I’m moving out until your bloody destiny has reached its climax, she said. It’s strange how alone I felt just then. I thought, it’s just me and the cat, now.” I said, “Gee whiz, Jo, can’t you take a little joke. You know I would never go to a fortune-teller.” “Still,” she said, “I can fell it, you’re a marked man.”