Driving Miss ‘Crazy! Crazy!’

DAVID SILVA

The second of two parts.

“Stay! Heel! Get a hold of yourself!”

It hadn’t occurred to me that transporting a kitten 10 miles to my

home would be anything other than a breeze. So the only thing I had

brought with me to accomplish the task was a small cardboard box with

holes poked in it. In hindsight, I should probably have brought a

whip and a chair.

The moment I put the kitten in the box and placed it on the back

seat of my car, the animal started howling and hurling herself

against the sides of the container. At first I ignored the commotion,

thinking that a 6-week-old kitten couldn’t possibly break out of a

box that I had folded tightly shut. But as I pulled onto the freeway,

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that the kitten was

launching into the top of the container with such force that the box

was actually lifting off the back seat.

“Shh! Calm down, you!” I shouted, to no effect. “Get a grip! Don’t

make me come back there!”

But I was wasting my breath. The kitten in my back seat was no

mere feline. As I had discovered when I arrived to get her, Emerald

Forest was a feline who had spent the first weeks of her life being

chased by a ferocious, cat-hating German shepherd named Bruiser. The

experience was like Marine boot camp for kittens. In order to

survive, Emerald Forest had quickly become very fast and very strong.

And, suddenly, she was out of the box.

Just as I was pulling into the fast lane, I checked the rearview

mirror and saw that the cardboard box was on its side and the lid

wide open.

I was driving 65 mph on the freeway, and the kitten was out of the

box.

“Not good!” I shouted as I glanced frantically around the car.

Emerald Forest was nowhere in sight.

Having never been in a situation like this before, I was unclear

as to what my next best step should be.

“Uhhh ... heeere, kitty-kitty-kitty.”

“Mmrow?”

I looked down, and there was Emerald Forest, staring innocently up

at me from the space between my foot and the brake pedal.

“There you are,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster

under the circumstances. “Now, I’m just going to pick you up and ...”

But the instant the kitten saw my hand reaching for her she

launched herself off the floorboard, clawed me on the chest and

disappeared.

“Ow!” I cried, the car swerving into the next lane. I glanced

wildly around before realizing that Emerald Forest was now perched on

the dashboard directly in front of me. I stared at the kitten, and

the kitten stared at me.

My heart racing, I decided to forego trying to soothe the cat and

just grab the little fur ball as fast as I could. Big mistake. Before

my hand got within a foot of her, Emerald Forest was ricocheting off

the sides of my Honda -- and me -- like a pinball in a blender.

“Rwarr!” Driver’s door to me to passenger’s door to me to windshield

to me. Finally, she came to rest directly on the top of my head and

dug her claws in, and that’s when I went purely bananas.

From the vantage point of the cars behind my Honda it must have

looked like I was in cardiac arrest, my arms flailing about as the

car veered wildly from lane to lane.

Utterly beside myself, I suddenly found myself shouting, “If you

don’t calm down RIGHT NOW, I’m taking you back to that German

shepherd!”

And whether it was because of the tone in my voice or because of

the previous contexts in which she’d heard the words “German

shepherd,” I don’t know, but suddenly Emerald Forest landed on my lap

and went perfectly still.

Very quickly, I picked her up with my right hand by the scruff her

neck and held her out in front of me.

“Do we have an understand- ing?” I asked, panting heavily.

“Mrrow,” she replied innocently.

“Not good enough,” I said, and with the same hand I held her by, I

flipped open the glove compartment, put her inside, and shut the

door.

Ten minutes later I was walking up the steps to my condo, holding

Emerald Forest away from my body the way one would a four-legged

piranha. The big test now was whether my roommate, Krystyna, bonded

with her. The whole reason why I’d gotten the kitten was to try to

break through my roommate’s denial that her sickly old cat, Sybil,

should probably be put down. If Krystyna rejected Emerald Forest, it

would mean I’d have to drive the kitten back, and I’d have sooner

faced an IRS audit than go through that experience again.

But one look at Krystyna’s expression when she saw the kitten told

me Emerald Forest had found a new home.

“Oh my God, look at how beautiful she is!” Krystyna exclaimed,

reaching for her.

“Be careful, Krystyna!” I warned. “She’s crazy! She’s crazy!”

But to my amazement, Emerald Forest stepped gingerly into

Krystyna’s hands and purred and preened. Krystyna wiggled a finger in

front of her face and the kitten playfully swatted at it, claws

retracted.

I shook my head. “Not 15 minutes ago, that cat tried to take me

out on the freeway.”

“Oh, you just don’t know to handle kitties,” Krystyna said. “Come

on -- let’s see if Gar and Sybil like her.”

Krystyna walked over to the two old black cats and set Emerald

Forest down in front of them. “Look, kids, we’ve got a new friend for

you!”

I had expected Gar, who was ferociously dominant and something of

a bully, to be anything but pleased with this development. But even

Krystyna was surprised at the show he made of his displeasure. Gar

sniffed at the kitten warily, hissed, and suddenly started gasping as

if having a heart attack. “HISS! HISS ... cack ... cack!” He stumbled

backward wide-eyed, and I suspected that if he could, he’d have

clutched at his heart with his paw.

Sybil’s reaction was even more surprising. She walked up and

examined Emerald Forest, figured out she was looking at her

replacement, and instantly started getting better. Over the next

couple of weeks she moved around at an increasingly lively pace and

started putting on weight. Eventually she was even strong enough to

climb up to her favorite cat perch, meowing loudly to make sure both

Krystyna and I saw her do it.

When the time came to have the kitten fixed, Krystyna loaded her

up in a cat carrier and asked if I would drive her to the vet.

“I’ll just walk her over,” I said. “I can use the exercise.”

“Are you sure?” Krystyna looked puzzled. “The vet’s two miles

away.”

I looked at Emerald Forest through the wire top of the carrier.

The cat gazed back at me innocently.

“Yeah, that’s OK,” I said. “I think I’ll just walk.”

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019.