What's right with this picture?

The other day Pearl was sitting in the big greenhouse window in the kitchen as I was preparing a meal. I looked up to see her staring intently at me with big round eyes, and it took a moment to register what was different: her head was straight. It's been tilted since early July, when she came down with feline vestibular syndrome, a disorder of the nerves of the inner ear.

Again last night, we were in bed and she was sitting on a pile of freshly laundered clothes on top of George's bureau, staring at us. "Look!" I exclaimed. "She's straight!"

I do believe Pearl is getting back to normal. Perhaps the advent of fall, which you can feel in the air, is helping, since for reasons unknown, feline vestibular syndrome is associated with summer. I keep thinking of Paul Simon's song "Something So Right"—"when something goes wrong, I'm the first to admit it ... when something goes right, it's apt to confuse me, because it's such an unusual sight. I can't get used to something so right."