Sneezes are so overwhelming in their effect that children’s books have sometimes used them to explain what adults experience during sex.

Ironically, human sneezing is both totally out of control and totally consistent within that loss of control. My girlfriend, Rachel, for example, always sneezes exactly twice during a sneeze session. I always sneeze seven times. There are no variations. I recently polled readers and found exactly that two-to-seven continuum, but people reported staying at one number all the time.

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Recently, of course, sneezes have demanded our attention because they have carried at least a faint whiff of ... death. The official medical term for sneezing is “sternutation,” which sounds like “stern,” which is maybe something we should be with them a little more.

But that is not what has riveted me. I have been forced to confront the true weirdness of sneezing because my house has been afflicted by paroxysms of them. Not the people in my house, the animals. And that delivers a truly new dimension of oddity because animals have no way to stop sneezes, and of course no incentive to modulate them in any way.

The cold was brought into the house by Buster, an indoor-outdoor cat. He walked up to me, opened his mouth so wide it seemed to unhinge like a snake’s, blasted out a truly heroic sneeze and covered me with a fine mist. I think he saw it as a gift, the way he occasionally delivers a dead rat. Then his nose began to run. It was a snaky, ropy river of goo. I remember thinking, uh-oh. Then I remember thinking, I hope he doesn’t give this to Barnaby, the other cat. And just about exactly that moment I heard a sneeze from the next room. Uh-oh.

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Barnaby’s sneezing has been even more theatrical than Buster’s, and he also tends to walk up to you to deliver his gift. In his case he throws his head back and starts blinking furiously. His face becomes comically distorted. He goes ah-ahh-ahh, like a person, then stops, as though he is reconsidering, and then launches it. He does six sneezes at a time. In one recent hour, I counted 22 sneezes from both cats.

Meanwhile Murphy, the dog, is getting into the act, in a more doggish way. Murphy is a big lady with a deep voice. She produces a sound somewhere between a cough and Jabba the Hutt clearing his throat. This continues for minutes at a time. She particularly likes doing it at bedside around 4 in the morning, and it wakes her, which reminds her she could do with a walk.

I realize this is not something of coronavirus gravity, but it has been kind of hellish in my house. I have begun responding to each animal’s sneezing with a personal message. It does make me laugh. I say, “Damn you.”

Email Gene Weingarten at weingarten@washpost.com. Find chats and updates at washingtonpost.com/magazine.

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