The kitten who named itself.

Two or three months ago, our barn cat had three kittens. Slightly wild, the kids still had great fun viewing them from afar. When they emerged walking and running a month ago, everyone was thrilled. Especially Brady. But the terrier in her emerged and, well, then there were two.

Blaine and I are not cat people. Cats eat mice – and the moles that dig tunnels under the lawn. The kids like the cats – but they are here for a purpose, and in the barn and half-wild is good.

So for the last month the kids have been attempting to tame down our two kittens: one tabby they loved because of the Mr. Putter books and his cat Tabby and one all-black kitten who was slightly tamer than the tabby. Brady got banished to a cable when outside and all was well.

Yesterday when doing the morning chores I didn’t see either kitten. But I didn’t really think about it. They are barn cats, after all. Who knows?

11:00 am Blaine called and asked if the black kitten was around. I went up trying to find it. I couldn’t find either one. So the story went:

Blaine got a call from someone he knows in another department and was told he needed to call security at work. He walked into another room to do so and someone else told him he needed to call security. Got it. Call security. Blaine commented to his co-worker how strange things seem to follow him around there. But they were about to get stranger still.

Blaine calls security, gets put on hold for 5 minutes. They come back on to tell him to hold on and he waits for another five minutes. They finally ask him what his extension is and hang up. Ten minutes later, they call him back.

“There’s an animal under your van in the parking lot and we’re wondering if it’s yours?”

“Why on earth would I have an animal under my van? Of course it isn’t mine.”

“You don’t own a black kitten?”

“Umm, yeah, but it’s certainly not here with me.”

He ended up heading to security, greeted by the sight of our black half-wild kitten that security had just spent an hour trying to lure out from under Blaine’s van. All this hubub over a barn cat. Blaine seems to have been more than slightly embarrassed. One security guard wanted to keep the cat. But the kids love that thing.

So, to end my long story, that tiny scrap of a kitten seems to have climbed (likely with the tabby, who has yet to show up anywhere) onto the undercarriage of Blaine’s vehicle and rode 10 miles and 20 minutes to the parking lot of Blaine’s work, including 3 miles on the interstate, somewhere on the outside of Blaine’s minivan. Blaine brought it home and it’s mother went straight away to nursing it, so there’s no doubt it really is our black kitten.

But now it has a name. The security guard named it ‘Lucky’. And now there is one.