Our cat

It was a hot, hazy afternoon and weathered colors of dust and asphalt rose in heat waves from the barren four-lane highway. Rock and his young brunette girlfriend or wife were fifteen miles from their house, about to merge onto an interchange when they saw a gray and white cat roughly the size of a school bus jogging along the access road near their car.
"That's Jo, isn't it?" Rock's significant other said.
"You know what, it is," Rock said.
He stopped the car on a vacant patch of dry weeds and dirt beside the road.
"Don't you think we should just let her get home on her own?" the young woman said.
Rock didn't know the name of the woman seated beside him. He had never seen her before, but he carefully considered her question. He recognized its logic, something about the importance of cats finding their way, but they were a long way from home, and this was an awful place for a cat. Rock stepped out of the car, picked Jo up, and they drove away.