You probably remember our previous cat, Gordon:
While he was with us, I created a Google Photos album called Gordon and shared it with Wendy. I turned on a setting in Google Photos to automatically add pictures to the album whenever it detected a new picture of him. It worked surprisingly well. When I took a picture with Gordon in it, a few minutes later I received a notification that it was automatically added to the shared album.
Once, when we were vacationing in St. Augustine, FL, with family, I took a picture of a black cat that kept wandering around our rental house:
A few minutes later, Google auto-added the photo to the Gordon album! It wasn't Gordon, of course, but the algorithm identified it as him. I found that funny, so I left the picture there.
Gordon eventually passed away in 2021 (see this post).
Several months ago, I took Chili to the vet. It was at the very end of his health saga that I documented here. He seems to be doing fine since those surgeries, thankfully (and knock on wood). While Chili and I were sitting in the reception area, a mostly black cat wandered over to me for some attention. He belonged to the vet's office and lived there. I gave him some pets and took a picture of him:
You can probably tell where this is going. A little bit later, I was stunned to see a new picture was added to the Gordon album. When I saw it was the photo I'd just taken, I suddenly remembered about the album's auto-add setting. Google thought it was a picture of Gordon, so it dutifully added it to the album, which previously had no activity for over 5 years.
The funny thing about this is that the vet's cat was also named Gordon! So it was doubly appropriate that it was added to the Gordon album.
Sadly, a few weeks after this particular visit, the vet sent out an email to customers announcing that their Gordon, who was quite old and had numerous health issues, had passed away. It was a sweet email. The vet referred to Gordon as her supervisor and her friend she shared lunches with. "No solo shift was ever lonely with him on the job," it said.
This seemed like a fitting end to my Gordon photo album, so I went into Google Photos and turned off the auto-add feature.
A few weeks later, the vet sent out another email saying they have a new office cat, a white cat named Mobey.
I was reminded of all this while driving home this morning from a ride on a bike trail. I saw a black cat suddenly dart across the road. It easily avoided the car in front of me, but I was afraid for its life as it ran into the left lane. An oncoming car was almost certainly going to hit it, but the car braked just in time for the cat to make it safely across. Whew!