Emerged from the engine bay.

Yesterday, Ann’s quick trip to Walmart to pick up some baking supplies went awry.

As she walked by some cars on her way into Walmart, she began hearing the cries of what sounded like a small kitten. Perplexed. she followed the sound to a Chevy Cruz. She looked inside the car, but then realized the sound was coming from under the hood. A woman with five kids wandered by about that time and also heard the cat.

Ann and the woman with the kids did their best to coax the cat from the engine bay, but it seemed the kitten was stuck. Though the car was unlocked, they were unsure how to proceed, so Ann went inside of Walmart to have the car’s owner paged. The owner didn’t hear the page.

Then, Ann called the local police’s non-emergency number; in turn they requested the animal control people assist. Unfortunately, the one animal control person on duty was in another town. Then, Ann contacted the local animal shelter, only to find out that they and other shelters are over-capacity. If the shelter got the cat, it would likely be euthanized.

That left Ann with a choice. Given the cat seemed to be stuck in the engine, leave the kitten to die OR try to rescue the kitten. Of course, you already know the decision she made ….

Forty-five minutes after initially first hearing the kitten, and with the kitten’s meow getting weaker and weaker, an elderly man approached and asked what the Hell are they were doing laying on the hot asphalt wedged under his car.

They explained a kitten was trapped in his engine compartment. A grumpy old man, he stated he didn’t have no ‘damn’ cats and neither did his neighbors.

According to Ann, he was a gem, lol.

Ann and the woman finally got him to open the hood. It was only then they they were able to free the poor little guy. By then, his mews were very very faint and far apart and he was just limp. Now, what to do with the kitten?

Ann’s co-rescuer refused the pleas of her 5 children to take the kitten home, so, despite her cat allergies (she is allergic to most, but not all cats), she decided to bring the cat home.

A quick call to the local vet, resulted in a quick triage to make sure it didn’t need immediate care. After checking the kitten, the vet put “it” as a “he” who is roughly six weeks old and just under a pound. While under-nourished, he isn’t starved and didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger. So, the vet set us up with some food and recommended her lot of water.

Given the kitten is a he (aka Tom cat) and given it was stuck in the engine bay of a Chevy Cruz, what else could we call this tiny kitten other than Tom Cruze??

Finally eating some food…

Our girls are beside themselves with curiosity an way overwhelming love for the kitten. Mr. Tom Cruz has endured more saliva and licks than any kitten should have to endure. Once the kitten-as-curiosity subsides, everyone *should* get along just fine.

Mike shared a newspaper ad related to his job as a newspaper carrier. He purchased and drove a Jeep Fleetvan to deliver the newspapers.

He writes, “I drove this Jeep Fleetvan for many years, working for Suburban Newsdealers, Clifton NJ. Back then, (late 70’s early 80’s) there was “loose talk” about newspapers being delivered to your home by computer, nobody believed it.

This was a company I worked for in the late 60’s, in NJ common practice to have motor routes home delivering close to 1000 copies a day. The guy I worked for had 2 fleetvans, one for parts. Both eventually ended up in the junk yard up the street from where I worked. I wanted to drag it home but no place to store it, besides, my dad would of had a S__T fit.”

Bill shared this article about SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and his failed attempt to use captured jeeps against the allies (though the second part fo the article about the jeep name is less informed based on the research I’ve posted). There are also some neat stories in the comments, including this one:

“The Hollywood actor David Niven was assigned to Montgomery’s HQ as a frontline liaison officer. Thanks to Bradley basing his 12th Army Group HQ too far on the south end of his operational sector Ike decided to reassign Bradly’s two northernmost armies, the First and the Ninth, to Monty’s 21 AG. Monty sent Captain Niven on a fast jeep drive intended to meet with each divisional and regimental HQ of those two armies with, information, codewords, radio frequencies, etc — stuff they needed to quickly integrate with their new AG assignment. Not being a hardcore baseball fan he had trouble getting through one roadblock until he mentioned his date with Betty Grable. The GIs let him pass with advice to “bone up on baseball, Dave!” Niven’s driver was Sgt. Peter Ustinov.”

Here is David Niven in a jeep years after the war for the movie “Before Winter comes”: