suddenly

The children refuse to accept that our cats' given genders.  "All cats are gender-ambiguous," opined one.  They always disagree with me about what gender any given cat is.

We were discussing this and squabbling over what gender our little cat Zorro is when Lola expounded upon her perceptions of our big cat, Coconut. "I always thought he was a girl and then one day I looked, and suddenly he was a boy!"

Iris and I found this amusing to no end.  We spent the following couple of hours "suddenly" looking at things.  "Suddenly I looked, and you were children," I said.  "Suddenly you looked, and your mother was middle-aged."