My car, my crappy little Dodge Stratus, officially gave up the ghost a few weeks ago. This means that we are down to one car, which isn’t all that bad (husband is deploying soon, so it’s all mine then anyway). The bad thing is that this car, a 1990 Toyota Celica is a sports car. A sports car that just barely squeezes the kids into the back, and which has a crummy clutch and stick shifter.

As many of you know, driving with small children is a multitasking event. You’ve got to be ready to hurl candies and pacifiers into the back seat, and able to fish around under your small charge’s feet to locate dropped Polly Pocket shoes. You’ve got to be able to balance a whopper and fries on the side console and feed yourself without dripping on the clean shirt you put on for going out. To a seasoned mother, this isn’t so hard- but when driving a manual transmission, you really need a third hand to pull it off.

Now, our car, Cherry Pie, is a sweet little ride. She’s getting old, but she’s always been our favorite car because she runs. Cherry Pie is also the car Chris had when we were dating, so we have lots of fond memories of old country road makeout sessions. That stick shift may have saved our moral integrity, as it is pretty hard to smooch with a big lump in between you, phallus shaped as it may be. Chris taught me to drive her when we were engaged, and I knew then he must really love me, because he would never let anyone near his baby. We even got into an accident in this car while I was in labor and Chris was panicking. Now, she’s slightly dinged and one headlight refuses to go down, so she is perpetually winking, as if she’s put on her come hither look because she remembers the old days before there were two car seats crammed into the back.

We got the Status when Jonas was born because a baby seat wouldn’t fit. For almost five years I had no reason to drive Cherry Pie. Now, very suddenly, I’m supposed to remember.

I asked Chris to accompany me on a quick drive the other day. The plan was to go out the back gate, swing around, and come in the front. This would take me through all 5 gears (and reverse too) and take only about fifteen minutes.

Now, during the time that I was driving an automatic, Chris decided to replace the old shifter with a new fancy shifter with an big spider emblem on it. He thought it was pretty cool, and I didn’t care at the time, because, hey, I wasn’t driving it. The only trouble with this new stick was that it doesn’t have any numbers on it, and I couldn’t remember which direction all the different gears went! Chris mocked me relentlessly for this, but I think deep down he knew that it was highly likely that I would throw myself into reverse while attempting to move into 5th gear, so he came along for the ride to supervise.

Well, you really don’t forget how to drive. It wasn’t that hard (as long as I don’t drive with the emergency brake on, I do quite well). We tooled around very quickly, with only one mishap. I killed the engine as I was showing the gate guard my id. I only mess up when I have an audience. We we’re almost home, driving down the main road of the base when all of the cars in front of me started to drive all jerky and slow. Of course, this ticks me off, because, “How rude to make me downshift and potentially kill the engine! I was perfectly happy staying in 3rd gear all the way home, and now I’m all over the place. . .” I’m halfway through my mental tirade when I see the reason for the funky driving.

There is a cat in the middle of the road. He has been hit, and he is sitting there in obvious pain, while everyone swerves around him. To Chris and I, that is unacceptable. I stopped the car (all by myself, clutch, 3rd gear, 2nd gear, 1st gear, brake- TA-DA) and flip on the hazard lights. I send Chris out of the car to see if he can help the cat. It turns out that the cat’s hindquarters are sliced down to the bone, and the cat is pretty ticked off about it, and unwilling to let Chris near him.

Chris hops back in the car (did I mention it’s raining?) And dials the base police. The MPs say they will be there shortly. While Chris is making the call, the cat disappears from sight. Now, we know the cat headed the direction of our car, and we know it didn’t come out from under the car, but when we look for it- the cat is not on the ground under the car. I said, “It’s crawled into the engine.” Chris doesn’t believe me. I told him to pop the hood and look, and sure enough, there is a cat in our engine block. The poor thing is shaking, hurt, wet, and miserable, but it’s out of the rain and squished up next to a very warm engine in a place that we cannot extract him from. After well over a half an hour of talking to the cat, and smiling at passers by (Can we help you guys? Erm, There’s a cat in our engine. Zooom.) the MPs arrive, and immediately recognize me as the chick who killed her engine at the gate.

The first guy walks over and peeks under the hood and exclaims, “There’s a cat in there!” He was totally shocked. Apparently, all the MPs thought that we had made a prank call, that no cat would ever crawl up into an engine, and that was why they made us block traffic on the busiest road on base for nearly forty-five minutes. These guys have no idea what to do about the cat. Normally, we would just reach in and get it, but he’s hurt and we didn’t want to risk hurting him more, so we opted to call the Humane Society.

Our Humane Society is right off base, so the portly idiot they deployed only took a half an hour to arrive. He assesses the situation, grabs a stick, and gives the cat a hard jab so that it runs out of the engine and high tails it down the street limping on three legs. Chris, the MPs and I stare in shock and horror at this sadist as the cat runs off. All four of us, when considering the HUMANE Society were thinking more along the lines of a tranquilizer dart and a ride to the vet to get cleaned up. Any idiot can poke a cat with a stick. The guy says, “that’s taken care of”, hops into his truck and drives off, leaving us shaking our heads and sputtering.

Because we no longer have a good reason for blocking traffic, we get back in the car. Two hours after we went out for the quick drive, I let Chris take us home.