Note card saves the cat

This is a tale of how a 3x5 note card and a nagging wife can save a cat's life.
It's 2am and we are just about to leave for a 12+ hour drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am performing last-minute checks to make sure all items are accounted for. I run upstairs and grab a note card to jot down gas mileage statistics. Once there I realize, “I should brush my teeth or Erin will get upset.” I run into our room and grab my toothbrush, but cannot find the toothpaste because it's been packed. I run to the downstairs bathroom because I know we have sample toothpastes from the dentist there.

While brushing my teeth, Erin gets upset at me for taking too long and complains that I left the lights on upstairs. “I'm going to put the toothbrush back when I'm finished” I say.

“That's stupid just leave it down here. I'll turn off the lights.” And she drags herself up the stairs with tired eyes to turn off the lights.

A few short moments later we're in the car ready to leave. I close the garage door and realize, “I don't have my 3x5 note card. I must've set it down when I got my toothbrush. I knew there was a reason to go back upstairs.”

I open the garage door and start up the stairs picking up my toothbrush along the way. At the top of the stairs I noticed our bedroom door was wide open. We don't let the cat in our room because we don't like the hair all over. I replace the toothbrush into it's holder and pick up the 3x5 and place it into my pocket. Next I search for the cat because he is obviously being naughty. When ever our door is cracked open he dashes in. But he is nowhere to be found in our bedroom. So I search the other rooms of the house. Nowhere to be found.

The screen door to the garage has a mysterious hole in it. “Great, now we lost the cat!” Cats are curious so he can't have gone too far. I search the entire complex while Erin searches the garage. Thirty minutes pass and still we haven't found him. “This is a great beginning of our trip.” Moments later I hear a noise from the far side of the garage, and sure enough it's Six (the cat). When he sees me he leans down on his front paws and extends his orange hairs and tail straight up to look like a mean devil cat. I picked him up threw him in the house and slammed the door behind him. I yelled through the closed door, “I just saved your life, you stupid cat!” And we started our trip.

Upon looking back I realized that if I didn't have a stupid need to track my MPG on paper during a road trip, or have a wife that nags me to brush my teeth the moment I wake up, we may have returned from our 5 day trip to a very sick or dead cat in our garage.