Don’t ask how.

I saw it happen with one of those, “Oh, no!” moments.

I’ll be able recreate it, but not until I get into town later this morning.

Since getting back from the walk, I’ve been going through my twice-a-day routine with Duke.

He gets a dish of canned food and encouragement to eat, which sometimes just involves an encouraging word, other times requires a few strategic strokes with brush or hand. Usually we’re in the bedroom with the door closed to keep the other cats out. They don’t get canned food in the morning and are not happy about the discrimination.

In any case, after Duke eats his fill, I sit down with the brush and groom him. He likes his face brushed, and his head, and, well, all body parts. He usually starts purring right about now.

With luck, he just settles down. While still brushing, I pinch a place on his shoulders, reach for the syringe with his dose of insulin, and manage the injection in one smooth stroke. Most times, he doesn’t notice the needle. He does notice the disruption of the brushing/petting.

After he’s gotten his insulin, I wrap up the grooming session. He usually finishes cleaning and then goes to sleep. I can open the door and let other cats in to clean up any leftover food.

All this isn’t hard, but it takes some time. Twice a day. We’ve been at it for several weeks. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, though, it takes precedence over necessary blog rewrites, as this morning.

So have patience. The rewrite is coming.

Did you happen to see PBS Hawaii’s Leahey & Leahey last night, with guest Stephen Tsai?

This weekly program features father & son team, Jim Leahey and Kanoa Leahey in a 30-minute discussion of local sports that often wanders in political and social commentary. It’s always a well-done piece of local programming.

They introduced Tsai as the top Star-Advertiser reporter on the UH football beat.

Tsai responded that he had just taken a drug test (did he say “drug test” or “blood test”?) and hoped that his job at the Star-Advertiser is secure. It was said in a joking manner, but it didn’t seem to be a joke. However, I have to leave the door open because I haven’t heard anything else about such testing, which would likely raise a fuss. Hopefully I just misunderstood.

And I don’t see anything concerning drug testing on the Hawaii Newspaper Guild web site. Actually, the transition to the Star-Advertiser isn’t yet reflected there. Instead, there are still links to the Star-Bulletin and Advertiser. I suppose this reflects some disarray as the Guild goes through merger talks of its own.

For several weeks, he was just exhausted. Slept a lot. I admit to visiting less.

In the past couple of weeks, his physical health and mental condition have been on separate tracks. Sometimes they are running parallel, sometimes there’s a big divergence. And things seem to change quickly. I think of that image of the wobbling track of a hurricane, like a bottle in a current. It’s on a general track in one direction, but it wobbles along that track in a way that can create significant differences.

When I stopped to see him early last week, he was in bed, but agitated and very upset. He wanted to know if I had heard anything about “what’s happening.”

“No,” I replied cautiously, not knowing what he was talking about.

Then it came right out.

“When I got home last night,” he said, serious, making eye contact with me. “I didn’t have a wife. She was gone. She moved out on me. I think she moved in with Bonnie.”

“Home” is in Kahala, the house where my parents lived since somewhere around the beginning of WWII. He hasn’t been home, at least not physically, since a couple of days before Thanksgiving in 2008. Bonnie is my sister. She’s been living with my mom in Kahala to assist since before my dad ended up in this nursing home.

He was very worried about the situation and my mother’s absence.

“I don’t understand why she didn’t call,” he said.

Okay, I can understand that, at some level, he’s worried she hasn’t been here to visit very often. She’s at home dealing with her own mobility and health issues, and getting to his bed on the third floor of the nursing home becomes a major expedition.

Then it got worse.

“There was a Japanese guy in the kitchen, and he looked like he had been invited.”

All this took me by surprise, and I really didn’t know how to respond. I think I told him that one of her club meetings probably just ran a little long, but that I would check it out.

He closed his eyes again for a minute or so, then looked up at me.

“I pulled out a couple of chafing dishes, just in case,” he said, then launched into an explanation of how these can be used for warming, or for steaming, like a double boiler.

This is something he would have done back when he ran his own restaurant supply company. He would pull stuff out of their inventory for various needs. Last minute Christmas gifts? Head for the stockroom. Birthday? Pull out a frying pan. Today he spoke as if he really had just opened a few boxes and dug out their contents. Just in case.

Meanwhile, I was trying to guess the source of the brain short-circuit leading to the sighting of a Japanese man “in the kitchen.”

Did he catch sight of the man in the next bed, which he continually forgets is there? Did a new nursing assistant deliver his meal? I never did quite figure that one out.

Despite floating in the fantasy zone, he surprised me with a couple of other mental jumps that showed his brain can make connections. When I mentioned that one of Meda’s sisters is moving to a home in Menlo Park, California, he quickly pointed out his cousin, Bill Fairley, had lived in Menlo Park. And then he remembered the name of one of the people in an old photo I showed him on my previous visit. In the picture with my dad were Duke Kahanamoku, Dad Center, and several other unidentified men.

“Ward Brewster.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Ward Brewster, I think he was the short guy in the picture. He was around the beach a lot.”

He remembered the photo, and added another name to it.

Then Bob, the 3rd floor nursing supervisor, stopped in.

My dad called out cheerfully, “Hello, Paul!”

He thinks that he’s talking to Paul, who apparently welcomed people to the old Commercial Club in downtown Honolulu. The business club was upstairs from the Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company, where my dad worked from the time he arrived in Honolulu in 1939.

Bob knows the story, and doesn’t mind at all being “Paul”.

Another day, another visit. On this afternoon, I found him in bed, but his voice was clear and strong. His mind, though, was someplace else.

He greeted me by name, but that was the high point.

He closed his eyes.

Opened them.

Asked me if my friend was still visiting.

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but didn’t want to argue.

So I said, no, they’re gone.

He asked: “Did she leave yesterday?”

She? Again, I was winging it.

“No, earlier in the week,” I sputtered.

He asks: “When does your wife get back?”

Oh, oh. I tell the truth.

“She wasn’t gone. She’s been here.”

He looked at me.

Closed his eyes.

Opened his eyes.

“Who’s the guy having all that fun?”

I ask, puzzled, “which guy?”

“The one on the golf course,” pointing across the room towards the hall.

I had to just say that I didn’t know.

Then, trying to say something more, he managed only a few slurred words. I couldn’t tell whether this was the sleep, vague state of mind, or another micro stroke, of which he apparently has had many.

He had lunch in front of him and, when he next opened his eyes, was surprised to see it.

He asked: “How long has that been here?”

Then: “Was I here when it came in?”

It took several seconds, then he understood that he must have been there, since he was in the bed and apparently hadn’t been anywhere in a while.

He looked at the food, but didn’t eat anything.

Then he closed his eyes again and was asleep.

And so we continue on this winding path.