Did I tell you guys about the kitten I found in my car? Do you guys believe anything I tell you?
I drove about 15 miles into South Salem, 'bout 60 mph all the way. When I got to Scott's, while I was waiting for him, I left the engine running and lifted the hood to check something. I'm poking around in there, when I notice on my right, a black fuzzy ball-thingy looking like a giant spore-y mildew about the size of a Texas grapefruit ~ growing on top of the little metal ledge making the wheel well. I can't figure out what it is. It looks very science fiction. I stick my head closer, trying to pick a vector angle that would put me out of the line it might spurt it's alien spore stream. I slither up to within about a foot, making sure I keep my hair outta the fan (heh heh), and get right up there close. It's one of the most light absorbing objects I've ever seen. Can't make out a single detail about it. I'm remembering back to my college astronomy class, thinking of the common blackest man-made materials. Help me out here, Alex; but I think one of them is black velvet. (Black velveeta is number four.)
So, anyway, I twisted and turned my head, careful to keep my curly tresses out of the fan (I had some then - and experience), and I was just about to get something to poke it with (I sure as heck wasn't going to touch it, first) ~ when I get a glimpse in just-right light, and realize it's.....fur. Fur?
Fur???
What thuh....
Fur? A fur-ball???
Yes; there's a four-inch diameter perfectly round fur-ball in my engine.
[I better not hear anybody laughing. I've had weirder things than that in my engines. LOTS of engines get fur-balls.]
Scott is ready and comes out with his toolbelt, and looks upturned-nose at it. He's too chicken to get anywhere close to it.
I don't remember how it dawned on me it could be an ultra tiny kitten curled up in an ultra-tiny circle; stuck, paws and face away from me on a little foreign-car wheel well; a sloped and slickery ledge of metal about four inches wide. [Maybe somebody got me some coffee.] That very unlikely explanation didn't make a lot of sense, because it was straight down from the metal edge the fuzz abutted to the ground on that side of the engine; or into the dice-o-matic fan; and whatever it was had just ridden over 15 miles of bumpy country roads at 65 mph mysteriously adhered to that cliff-ledge the whole way.
(Mysteries are what usually make me late for work.)
(I can't figure out why so many hard-to-understand things happen to me, though. They use up a lot of my time.)
It would be the smallest, blackest, roundest, stickiest, luckiest ~ and bravest or dumbest ~ kitten I had seen in years; but I'd run out of theories, and had Scott shut off the engine. I got my face down in there close, weirded-out and feeling like for sure some bad thing or joke was going to happen, or some sucker science-fiction thing. Still, I tried to talk to it. (Movies training.) Then I grabbed it. It was A KITTEN. A tiny, round, very lucky kitten. And very surprised to be alive, and completely bewildered by a good thing finally happening to him. Scared, barely breathing palm-thing. If he had even turned to "look" in there, at any time after the engine started, he would have fallen. But he kept his tiny head and paws curled in a tight, safe, ball. He was really too young to be away from his mother, and things hadn't been going well.
Man, Scott was excited. He couldn't believe it. (He gets excited.) He couldn't imagine it stuck there all the way in from town. Neither could I. Maybe it was a thin layer of dirt or Providence, but the ledge was basically a slick, polished-paint metal, that curled gradually downward over the wheel. .
So then I had to figure out what to do with him, which I wouldn't have had to do if hehadn't stuck. If you don't see him bouncing down the roadway behind the car, it doesn't really matter.
I wound up having to drive him home. (He coulda gotten out of there before we left, ya know.)
He taught me something, though. When I wrote the ad trying to get him adopted, he was gone in the first fifteen minutes, to the first of five callers who wanted him real badly.
You see, I'd GOTTEN SOME COFFEE and written this really neat ad about how a cat who has survived this (insert vivid, gasping-dramatic account of his miraculous trip and fortuitous discovery) ~ a cat with as courageous bearing and history and charm as this ~ deserved the best owners in the cat World.
I've been a good liar ever since. (Put some ~ flair ~ in it.)
After all ~ finding a good home for em is not a sin.
Neat discovery, huh? |
