You know those people that always seem to have funky weird things happen to them? Well, I'm one of those people. In the interest of time, I'll give just one example. My senior year of college, I was running an errand before swim practice one day. After I left the store and got back into my car, it started honking, all by itself. And it honked...and honked...and honked....all the way back to school. Imagine how much fun that was at red lights!!! Even after I parked it and was walking away, it was still honking. I guess it finally quit because it was quiet when I returned to it after practice.
So anyway, this morning was another one of those days for me. I arrived at the kids' preschool this morning and immediately heard very loud meowing noises coming from my car. I looked under, in front, and all around the car, but no cat. It was pretty obvious that the noise was coming from under the hood. Great. I took all three kids inside because I was a little afraid that I would find a half-charred cat under the hood and didn't really want them to see that. Very fortunately for me, there was another mom near my car when I came back outside and she heard the noise too, but she actually liked animals. (Don't get me wrong, it's not that I dislike animals, I just dislike animals anywhere near me. As long as they don't jump on me, come too close to me, and I don't have to touch them, then we're great.) I very sweetly talked her into opening my hood, because there was no way I was sticking my hand under the dark hood to unlock it when I just knew that cat was waiting to bite or scratch me. Sure enough, right on top of the engine was a half-grown cat, not moving, but very much alive. He didn't look burned, but he had a bloody nose and his hair was sticking straight up everywhere. And judging from how fast he was panting and how crazy his eyes looked, I'm thinking he was well on his way to a heart attack. Now, you'd think that he would have just jumped out when we opened the hood, but it couldn't be that easy. So my new mom friend offered to pick him up but she wanted gloves first. We go traipsing back into the preschool to explain the situation and beg for gloves. But I was really thinking that the cat would just jump out when we left it alone and it would be long gone when we got back. Oh no, it had now crawled farther up into the engine, like up under the dashboard. Every time this girl would try to reach it, it would crawl farther back. (By the way, I was not being totally useless while she was climbing in my engine. I did hold her baby while she was doing all this!) :) Finally, we had to call animal control for this stupid cat. Thankfully they arrived quickly and rescued me from the crazy, suicidal cat. The cat was not happy to be placed in a cage and kept running around banging into the walls and making the most horrible noises ever. I did actually feel kind of bad for the crazy cat and whoever lost him, but not bad enough to take the thing home and search for its owner(let's not get any crazy ideas here!). Whatever happens to the cat, I'm guessing he won't hide in car engines anymore.
