Have You Seen My Cat?

So I am walking down Broadway next to my female companion, and for independent reasons state the following observation: “You have become incredibly fit this past summer.” She stops walking. I turn around and ask what is the matter. She looks at me with her mouth open, then closes it, then asks: “Did you just say that I’ve become incredibly fat this past summer?”

Which reminded me of Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” when Marlow returns to his apartment and one of the beautiful and ever-naked yoga-enthusiasts living next door asks him “Have you seen my cat?” and he, absent-minded, responds “No, you don’t look fat.” If two lines ever summed up relations between a man and a woman, there they are.