Cat charmer

The Z/S/J is going home in the morning. You thought that's where the story would end, didn't you?

On Saturday, our friend EdC. had to make an unexpected trip back to the Mainland and I offered to check in on his two feline friends for him. "The boys" will be staying at their house so that I can get some much-needed sleep. But I may feel the need to post pictures of them occasionally so that he can see they are thriving under my tutelage.

In other cat news:
Other cat news? Can there possibly be more? Oh yes, there can.
(This first part is all secondhand information) Brad was leaving the office tonight and stopped next to his car to talk for a few minutes with Stef. They heard a noise coming from Brad's car. "That sounds like a cat," Stef said. (A colony of stray cats does live in the parking lot at our place of employment.) "What? No. There's no cat in my car," replied Brad.

Brad got in his car and drove a few blocks and then called me. "I think there's a cat in my car somewhere," he said. "What? What do you mean?" I replied. "Here, listen to this. Can you hear that?" He moved the phone away from his ear as he was driving and I could hear the definite squell of some type of animal. "Oh my god. That does sound like a cat. What the heck is that?" I asked. "I don't know. But I'm gonna pull over at the Shell station and check it out."

This could turn into a really long story. I'll summarize the next part. Brad goes to the Shell station and pops the hood. He looks around in there for a few minutes and doesn't see anything. I tell him to just take his car back to the office and I'll pick up there and we'll figure out what is wrong with the car in the morning. He agrees. He calls me a few minutes later and says there was, in fact, a kitten in the engine region of the car and the Shell guy got it out. But now he's got this scrawny kitten that he can't just leave at Shell, so we're still gonna meet at the office and figure out what to do with it. I don't want a cat, but I don't have the heart to just leave him somewhere. We decide maybe we'll bring him home tonight and take him to the shelter in the morning. I tell Brad to hold onto him until I get there.

So, I get to the office and Brad says, "You are not going to believe this. The cat is back in the car." Me: "What do you mean?" Brad: "I mean, I pulled up here and was waiting in the car for you with the cat and the cat jumped off the seat and went up behind the glove (compartment)." Me: "You've got to be freakin' kidding me."

But no, he was for reals. We dig around under the hood for a good 10 minutes. Then Brad went to the back building to borrow a flashlight and I turned on the car to see if I get the cat to come out. He's not in the engine region this time, he's in the console and crying because the air conditioning is cold. So we leave the car running in an effort to freeze him out. After a few more minutes, we can see him behind the glove box trying to figure out how to get out. But we can't reach him. We try closing the glove box hoping that he'll just jump into it and we can open it up and take him out. That's a nice dream. We need some kind of food to lure him out. And we need to remove the glove box. Brad goes back to the back building to get a screwdriver. One of the guys working back there has some leftover raw fish from his dinner and offers it to us.

This didn't all happen as quickly as it sounds. From start to finish, this saga must have lasted 90 minutes. So, how did it end? Without taking another 90 minutes to tell the story — the glove box comes off, the cat comes out far enough to get the fish that I can grab him and I pull him out. We left him with the office cat colony. He'll be fine. We weren't going to take another chance with having him in our car.