a strange coincidence about a cat........

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understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

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This story actually encompasses two coincidences. After I met my wife, we began to discuss family stories and I showed her some photos from my college days, including one of me in my cap and gown standing in front of the townhouse that I lived in while in school. My wife immediately recognized the townhouse development. She said "that's English Village in Memphis. My mother used to live there." Turns out that her mother and I lived back to back in that development at the same exact time for years and that my future wife had visited there many times! When I was asking my mother-in-law later about when she lived there and if she ever remembered seeing me, she had to deny ever remembering seeing me or talking to me. I had lost a large, grey male cat (my favorite one...) during my final year of living in English Village, so I jokingly asked her "well, do you remember seeing a large, grey cat that I lost?' She slid down in her chair and looked a little ashamed....then related a story to me of a cat that she would feed sometimes while she lived there ( I would let my cat wander around outdoors at times) that she felt might be needing a new mom, so she "adopted" him and took with her when she moved away. My cat was named "Churchill." She named him "Mister C"! She actually had a photo of him at the townhouse development in her own home. A very large, distinctively marked grey cat, Churchill.....or also known as Mister C......
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Date submitted:Sat, 19 Jan 2019 13:40:04 +0000Coincidence ID:10186