Meet Agnes, an ordinary gray tabby with an extraordinary talent for mischief and adventure.
If you missed Chapter 1, you might want to read it to find out how the Rasmussens had to decide what to do with a stow-away cat.
To read AGNES ON THE MOVE, CHAPTER 1 – click here –
If you read Chapter 1 and 2, read on and continue Agnes’s adventures.
CHAPTER 3 CLOSED WINDOWS
“Dad, how soon will we be in Disneyland?” Billy asked once we were underway the following morning.
“Billy, we’re still in Oregon. We won’t be in Los Angeles until tomorrow evening,” Jake responded.
“I can’t wait that long.”
“You’ll have to.”
“Can’t we go faster?”
“Not while we are climbing into the mountains. Anyway, we are nearly at the speed limit.”
“Why didn’t we get a new car that goes faster? Are we in California yet?”
“No we aren’t. Find something to do,” Jake scolded.
Billy pulled out some paper with lots of pictures from his stuffed “things to do” bag. I wanted a closer look at the pictures and slid down from my perch on back of the seat and sat down between Billy and David. The biggest picture was of a huge black and white stupid-looking mouse. I got all twitchy looking at him, and I began to knead Billy’s pants with my claws.
“Yow – Agnes!”
Billy quickly dumped me into the back of the wagon. I bit his finger. “Mom, Agnes bit me.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“No”
“Maybe you squeezed Agnes too hard? You need to be more careful when you pick her up. Why don’t you look at the brochure of Disneyland?”
Luckily, there were some Dorito crumbs left over from yesterday. I ate a few, curled up on Billy’s sleeping bag that had now become a blanket for me, and listened to my people.
“Mom, I don’t feel so good,” Billy reported after dropping the brochure on the floor.
“Here, eat a cracker, put something in your stomach. You hardly touched your breakfast. Try not to get so excited.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Oh yuck,” David said.
“Give him a bag,” Jake yelled, “and hurry.”
“Simmer down, Jake – you’re not helping at all. Billy, you’re not going to throw up. Just eat that cracker, and you’ll be fine. We’ll stop for a lunch break soon.”
“When are we going to eat lunch? I’m hungry,” David complained.
I curled myself into a little ball and listened to the tires hummmmmm. Almost like a purr. After a few minutes I was restless and returned to a perch behind David to watch the roadside passing by.
“Jake, I saw a McDonald’s sign a few minutes ago. Should be just a mile or so down the highway.”
“Carolyn, you know how I feel about those fast food chains.”
“Well, at least they’re clean and the coffee isn’t two days old.”
“How do you know? The kitchen might be filthy.”
“Jake, we went through this yesterday and the place you chose served an inch of grease with every hamburger – probably why Billy has a stomach ache.”
Before we reached Mc Donald’s, Jake saw a small gray building with a lit-up “Cafe” sign. He made a jerky turn, almost throwing me off my perch, and turned onto an exit ramp. The wagon grumbled to a halt in a gravel parking lot.
“Jake, this looks awful. I don’t want to eat here.”
“Come on, Hon, I bet this is where the locals eat. At least the food won’t taste the same as in a thousand other places.”
“Some comfort that is!” Carolyn got out, closed the window, locked and slammed the door. Without Carolyn to organize them, the family forgot that I was on the top of the back seat. I watched them disappear into the cafe. At first I stretched out full length on the back seat. My body began to heat up, I started to pant. I left my perch for Billy’s sleeping bag. It was worse. I was suffocating. I jumped to the front seat. The baking sun poured in through a side window. I tried all the tricks I’ve used to get out of the house; I scratched windows, meowed pitifully. The only space with any shade was between the rear seat and the front seat. I waited and waited .. . Those thoughtless humans . . . I panted harder; I was having trouble breathing . . .
I heard the door crack open and heard Carolyn, “I told you Jake. This is the last time – nothing but grease – my mouth tastes like . . . Jake, we didn’t leave any windows open. No one checked on Agnes! I don’t see Agnes anywhere in the car! Open my door!”
David shouted, “Hurry Dad, I see her on the rear carpet. She looks dead.”
David started sobbing while Jake turned and opened the back door.
The rear door opened and Carolyn gently lifted me into the air. “How could I forget? I think she’s still breathing. David, get her some water from the thermos. Oh, if Agnes isn’t all right, I’ll never forgive myself. Thank goodness, she’s opening her eyes.”
“She’ll be O.K., Honey, We weren’t gone that long.”
“We were too. This was close. Another couple of minutes . . . maybe seconds.”
Billy chimed in, “Lucky we weren’t in a restaurant where we would have been eating for a long time.”
Within a few minutes we were underway with Carolyn driving and all the windows half open. David sat in the passenger seat and I snoozed peacefully with my nose close to the fresh air vent. When I was feeling better, I stretched and settled myself in Jake’s lap in the rear seat. He needed comforting.
David erupted from the front seat, “Mom, did you seen the marker? We are in California!”
Billy, asleep with his head resting on Jake’s shoulder, missed it.
