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The Real World of Tom & Jerry

A couple of weeks ago, I awoke at 6am. I heard a noise outside our bedroom window. A raccoon had been diving into our garbage on a regular basis and although I was not happy about it, I liked watching him crawl into a four foot tall can, eat and then crawl back out.

Half awake, I walked into our closet to get to a window that overlooks the driveway, garbage cans and back yard. Our minivan was parked under that window. As I looked down to watch the raccoon, I saw something in our car, but in my sleepy state, I chalked it up to my hair going in front of my eyes. Then, I turned on the closet light, looked out the window, and saw a cat staring directly at me from inside our car.

Ryan was sound asleep. Waking the husband up at early hours is reserved for other emergencies, and I did not want to cash in that card on this. It was up to me to get this stray cat out of the car. After muttering a few choice words under my breath, I put on shoes and headed outside.

I opened one door to the car, but the cat would not get out. It flung itself against the glass in the back of the car multiple times. This cat was freaking out and freaking me out. I opened more doors and finally it escaped.

The night before this fiasco, I came home with the boys from school and the car door was left open. When I realized it was open at about 7pm, I asked Sean to close it. He ran out and shut the door. Unbeknownst to any of us, the cat was in the car when the door closed.

A few hours later, Ryan assessed the damage and cleaned the car out. He mentioned that he had seen what he thought might have been mouse droppings, but he was not sure. I was relieved to have the cat out, and never gave it another thought.

On Thanksgiving Day, I cleaned out the car to make room for more passengers. I lifted the retractable seats and found mouse droppings all over the entire trunk area.

Our best guess is that when the cat jumped in our car he had dinner plans that included his freshly caught, but still alive mouse. And this mouse had other plans that did not include being eaten. The mouse got away from the cat and an old fashioned cat and mouse chase ensued inside our car. The mouse survived the chase and had been living in our car for a week.

As for the mouse, we may need to apologize to our relatives in Atlanta because we may have left an uninvited house guest behind. I don't want to think of the other option...it is still in the car.

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