8th out of 9 lives

Years ago, my wife and I pulled into a doctor's parking lot on a cold, snowy day. We were cutting it pretty close to appointment time, but we made it with seconds to spare. As we were getting out of the van to go into the office, I heard a cow moo-ing. Considering we were downtown, at a doctor's office, moo-ing was NOT a sound one would expect to hear. So I assumed I was hearing things (again) and walked on but heard it again and this time, my wife heard it too - a low, guttural MOOOOOOOOOOO. And the cow was apparently in the engine compartment of our van ... I didn't REMEMBER leaving a cow under the hood.

It was pretty scary opening the hood - I mean, what the hell was I going to find under there? Something from the Exorcist? With one hellacious adrenalin rush, I FLUNG the hood open ... and there was one of our cats. Moooooooo!

He had a death grip on the battery and was in pretty sorry shape. He was moo-ing like a cow. He was covered in engine grease and I could see immediately that his tail had apparently been whacked off by the engine fan, but he wasn't bleeding too badly. His little paws however, had been burned from the residual battery acid. We hadn't realized it but the poor little fellow had been sleeping in the engine compartment and didn't get out in time when we drove off. He hung on the whole way to the doctor's office.

His paws healed, but he had a stump for a tail for the rest of his life.

8 down, 1 to go, Stumpy.