2/2011
It started like any other day with lots of opportunity for getting things done. Then the cat gets involved.
The wife and I were going to town to run some errands. Since we were going to haul off some trash, we took the truck. I loaded up some tools I thought I’d need. The dogs had been let out to run and were put up. Cats had been fed. Off we went. The road out was soupy mud, ice and snow. The weather had been bad and there was still a 4-foot and a 3-foot drift at the top of the hill. We’d only had about three inches of snow a couple of nights before but there were strong westerly winds. This was the most drift I’d seen in a couple of years.
The night before, we had to go to town in the jeep and when we got to the top of the hill the wife (driving) said, “Oh shit.” and started to slow down. No mud then only ice. I’m urging her to speed up and hit the tail of the 4 foot drift between the road and fence post at the corner of the pasture. She did, then promptly steered the car back into the road into the middle of the 3-foot drift and floored it effectively turning a nice Jeep Grand Cherokee into a sled. All four wheels spinning uselessly in the snow at least a foot off the ground. But, we had enough momentum to get through and on our way.
So in the truck, we splashed through the mud hole at the bottom of the hill and headed up to the top where I told the wife to just barrel on through staying in the same tracks as yesterday. The truck has a much higher center of gravity than the Jeep so we didn’t slow down, mud and snow splashing all over.
I always stop at Casey’s to get a coke for that long trip into town. Since it’s quicker, the wife got out to get us something to drink and I stayed in the truck. Sitting there I noticed a tiger striped cat (a dime a dozen as far as cat markings go) walk across the parking lot under the cars and trucks parked there. Now it flickered across my mind that that cat looked like one of the two we have like that, but it just didn’t reach full conscientiousness. I mean, what would our cat be doing 2 miles south of the farm at Casey’s?
While the wife was inside, another customer came in and told her that a cat had crawled out from under her truck. She came out and we thought it would be unlikely that a cat would have ridden into town under the truck, but I got out and we looked around. Yep, there was our cat under the car next to us bawling and shaking. Neither of us could reach it. I can’t bend over, squat, crawl, and a whole lot of other things due to the recent surgery. I could poke at the damn cat with my crutch a la my Mom and her cane. This resulted in the cat running back to the truck and crawling up into the undercarriage. Did I mention that we’d driven through a mud hole on the way to town? I was between the car and the truck, the wife was on the far side of the car, so I was closest to the runaway cat.
Let me take just a moment in this short tale and introduce you to Spitfire. Spitfire is one of four cats born under the farmhouse. The mother cat disappeared and left these guys hungry. After a couple of days, we were able to trap them and brought them home. We put them in a dog crate to keep them from running off, they were very wild and young. Not so young that they couldn’t bite, scratch, spit and run like a bat out of hell, though.
The night we brought them over the wife had to work and I was off. I’ve forgotten now why I went out to check on them, food or water or something. I’d had been in bed reading and had had a shot of scotch before going to bed for the night. I got up and put on my flip flops, this was late last summer and the weather was nice, but it was raining lightly. Anyway when I opened the crate, the cats made a bolt for it, mass escape! I got all of them back in except a tiger stripe. I grabbed a flashlight and off I run, chasing a 1 pound feline monster across the yard and into the woods in the rain, in flip flops, butt naked and half tipsy. I never did catch that cat, he came home on his own, but I did decide to name him Spitfire.
So back to Spitfire under the truck. I opened the hood and couldn’t see anything but engine stuff. I could see his hind end and tail through the wheel well on the front driver’s side. Did I mention the mud hole? I reached in and grabbed his tail to keep him from getting farther into the undercarriage and out of reach. Now I was being good and observing my post-hip-replacement body position precautions, but asked for to help pull him out. We both had our upper torso in the wheel well, over the tire and our arms under the frame, neither could see the cat but we both had a good grip on it. Finally, out comes the cat.
Guess who got to ride in the back because he was too wired for me to even think about holding him on my lap in the cab.
End of story, the cat is home and doesn’t want to have anything to do with trucks anymore. He has a new name, TruckRider. I did mention the mud, right?
Your muddy, grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.
Weary.