Cats

We go out of town for a few days, the cats don't see us around, they wonder where we are off to. And while we are gone, the cats think about us as the cats sit in the places they expect us to occupy by the normal daily-habit-routine-of-things. Then the cats forget about us, but then when the neighbors come over to feed them, these people are recognized as "not us" by the cats, so after the neighbors are gone, the cats think about us again. This remembering forgetting recalling goes on for a few days, until the cats are not certain if we, their owners, are entirely real, or just thoughts the cats have in their own heads. Then unexpectedly, we arrive back home in the middle of the night, and the cats look at us. They are happy we are home, but they are not sure if they have dreamed us out of thin air. The cats feel a bit shy. To determine if we are real, and not just a manifestation of their own thoughts, the cats stay awake and sit on us and hang out in the room for hours that night. It dawns on the cats we are real, we always existed that way. Now the cats have no idea where the hell we have been, or for how long we have been gone, except we have been somewhere -- re-entering from an environment that smells different.