The clear nights in Sweetieport Bay offered spectacular stargazing, and it had become a ritual for Ken and Toni to spread a blanket on their back deck, away from the coastal town's minimal light pollution.

"The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight," Ken noted as he set up his telescope with methodical precision. "We should see approximately sixty meteors per hour in optimal conditions."

Toni approached stargazing with the same dreamy wonder she brought to photography, seeing both science and magic in the cosmos above. "Do you ever think about how those stars are actually what the universe looked like thousands of years ago? We're literally looking at history."

What neither had anticipated was Samba's determined participation in astronomy. As Ken focused the telescope on Jupiter's moons, Samba decided the lens cap was clearly a new toy designed specifically for her entertainment. What followed was a comedic chase around the deck, with Ken trying to recover the cap while Toni laughed so hard she had to sit down.

"This," Ken said, finally rescuing the lens cap from under a deck chair while Samba watched with innocent wide eyes, "is why ancient Egyptians both worshipped and feared cats. They're simultaneously celestial beings and agents of chaos."

As they finally settled onto the blanket, Samba positioned herself precisely between them, a purring barricade that had become her preferred nighttime arrangement. The first meteor streaked across the sky, and for a moment, all three looked upward in unified appreciation.

"Make a wish," Toni whispered.

Ken, ever practical, started to explain that wishing on meteors was a cultural construct without scientific basis—but stopped himself, looking at Toni's upturned face in the starlight and feeling Samba's steady purr against his side.

"I don't need to," he said finally. "Statistical improbability notwithstanding, I somehow ended up exactly where I'm supposed to be."