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our cat back then and now our dog would wake up, start to pace around (and the dog's face expression when he looks at me would be the pretty clear readable excited expression that "She is coming home!!!"), etc. several minutes before me or my wife would come home. The irregularity of the specific time when for example i'd get back from work have always been significantly higher that those several minutes, while those several minutes mean that i'm like 1 or 2 kilometers still away in the car (or in public transportation bus back then in Russia).
> our cat back then and now our dog would wake up, start to pace around (and the dog's face expression when he looks at me would be the pretty clear readable excited expression that "She is coming home!!!"), etc. several minutes before me or my wife would come home.

Rupert Sheldrake wrote a book about this phenomenon [1]. There are many things in the universe that Science has yet to adequately explain.

[1] http://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/dogs-that...

Confirmation bias during the times they're right whereas they've learned that around those times you are more likely to come home.

Animals have a good sense of time during the day.

Humans are also terrible at being random.

A close friend had a few dogs that did exactly this. He started filming them and recording times when he was out and decided to head home. He never found an explanation, other than his dogs were psychic (and this is the most hardcore 'there is no god or magic' scientist I've met).
Is "atlasobscura" anything more than nonsensical clickbait? The formula is always:

"[How/Why] a (Insert Random Thing) (VERB) to (TRANSITIVE VERB) that (Absurdity or Ridiculous Claim)"

How is this article clickbait? It seemed to deliver what the headline promised. These days, “clickbait” around here is turning into what “fake news” is to the current U. S. administration: another name for articles I don’t like.
I deconstructed the headline specifically to outline how it is clickbait. The results are shocking, wait until you see what happened next!
It's true that their titles often need de-baiting, but many submissions at https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=atlasobscura.com have been more interesting than that. Good historical material is particularly welcome on HN.