Muffin was catnapped from our house while we were on vacation one summer by our upstairs neighbor who hated him sleeping on his outside stairs. After that, Muffin developed a taste for car riding. He would lay in the back window on the driver's side of the brake light. Pixel would wander around for a while then lay on the other side of the brake light. We were moving from Kentucky to Idaho and the two cats were sleeping in the back window. We noticed the woman in the front passenger seat of a crowded station wagon pointing out our cats to the male driving. Just as he turned his head to look Muffin raised his head, startling him and almost causing an accident. We could imagine the conversation:

Woman: Honey, look at those cats in that window. Don't they look lifelike?

Man: Yes they--Oh my God! They are alive!

On another move from Texas to California, we had the cats in the back of our station wagon sleeping comfortably. We had put all the soft items in the dragon wagon, so that the cats had a soft platform, level with the back window. My daughter and I were in the wagon following Rob and our son in the sedan. We kept in communication by using CB radios. As Rob was being passed by a semi which had just passed us, he heard over his CB, "Man, you ought to see all those pussies in that station wagon."

On the same trip, we stopped in Barstow, CA for the night and decided to drive through McDonalds on our way out of town. Rob had got food for our daughter and him and our son, Mike, and I were at the drive through window reaching for our orange juices when Tanada jumped through the window and into McDonalds. I yelled for help over the CB and Rob raced back to help grab the cat. You could hear her progress through the restaurant by the screams. In what seemed like hours and was actually only a few minutes, Tanada shot back out the window and into Rob's arms. He restored her to the wagon and carried our food over to us where we'd pulled ahead to get Tanada away from her breakfast. We joked after that that she wanted to make sure they cooked her bacon right.

On our latest trip across country, from Idaho to North Carolina, we had Tanada, Berfert and Buddy in the car. Tanada spent the entire 6 day trip sleeping on Rob's right thigh where he and I could both pet her. Buddy alternated between my lap and the back seat where he tried to sleep in the litter box. Berfert rode on the driver's headrest where Rob found his neck thoroughly cramped and I just got a warm head, though it did make me very nervous and Berfert liked to sing in my ear. Poor Berfert doesn't have a head for altitudes or twisty roads. We drove up highway 12 between Idaho and Montana through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Berfert was unable to appreciate his surroundings. He tried to warn us, gave this strange meow and threw up on Mike's chest. Berfert was so embarrassed. Mike was glad he had a spare shirt to change into at the next rest stop.

There are lots of other funny things that happened during our various moves, but these are the ones I remember tonight.

Copyright © Pam Shirk
October 7, 1999