A face on the highway

One Sunday afternoon, my sister and I were coming home from the mall when we ran into a little incident on the highway. The mall we visited was a bit out of the way so it wasn’t a route we often took. It was about one in the afternoon when we were heading back, and traffic started to slow as we approached the tunnel that led back to the city.

We were crawling along when I saw a tiny gray face staring at me on the road.

“Is that a cat?” I asked.

“Where?” my sister asked.

“Ahead of me.”

As I said that, we rode over the little gray ball. I knew that if it was an animal, it was small enough that it wouldn’t be crushed under my car as long as it stayed put.

Once I was sure I’d cleared it, I looked in my rear view mirror to see if it was okay. There was nothing there.

“Do you see it?” I asked my sister.

She hadn’t seen it to begin with. So, I thought maybe I had imagined it. Or maybe it was just a ball of trash after all. Whatever it was, it was gone.

Just then, my sister yelled, “Police! Stop!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a police SUV pull up next to me from the side of the road with its lights flashing. I slowed to a stop. In an instant, two officers were at my sister’s window. I turned the radio to an inaudible volume and rolled down our windows.

“Did you know there’s a cat under your car?” one of them asked.

“No!” I cried, and even though I was telling the truth, he instantly answered the question I’d asked mere seconds before.

I put my car in park as the two officers looked under my car. Behind me, I saw both inbound lanes of traffic stopped, even though the lane next to me was clear. One of the officers must have ordered both sides to stop as he checked my driver’s side.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to my sister as we waited.

A few seconds later, I heard one of the officers call, “Here it is!”

From the rear of my passenger’s side, I saw the other officer pop up with the kitten, the same gray ball of fur that I’d seen on the road. As small as it was, it had managed to cling to my car for several feet before the police had stopped me.

The officer brought it to the window to show us and asked, “Do you guys have a cat?”

“No!” we said in unison. 

He let us go. We thanked them and pulled away so that traffic could get moving again.

How?

I was so relieved that the kitten had made it, but I was so confused. A million questions circled my mind. The number one question was: what was going to happen to the kitten?

I’m not an animal person by any means, but for a second, I regretted not taking it home. Maybe he was meant to go home with me. Maybe this was supposed to be my cat. But I didn’t know if it had a disease. Where could I take it on a Sunday afternoon to get it checked out? How do I take care of a cat? Thinking back, I wouldn’t have even wanted to pick it up and take it out of the policeman’s hands. 

So, I’m sure that I made the right decision on that end, but it had all happened so fast. I didn’t want to hold traffic up anymore than I already was. So, I got moving again once I knew that we were in the clear, but to this day, I’m still curious as to what became of the little kitten.

Animals left on the highway

When I got home later that day, I did a quick Google search to find out if any news outlets had reported the kitten on the road. I didn’t find anything about our particular cat, but I did come across dozens of news stories about unwanted cats being thrown on the highway. One cat had even been glued to the road in some sick prank. So, unfortunately, it’s not an uncommon occurrence.

Maybe that’s why the officers had spotted it so easily. They were behind me when it had happened but not directly behind me. They had come out of nowhere, and I wouldn’t have seen them right away had my sister not brought them to my attention. 

A lucky break

Sometimes we get caught in situations with terrible odds, and we make it through without a scratch. It can drive us crazy thinking about the “what if’s” after the fact, but at the same time, there is so much relief at the actual outcome. It’s situations like these that make us question the concepts of fate, of divine intervention, of luck.

Why do we make it through some close calls but not others? Why does it sometimes feel as if a bomb is being dropped all around us, but we come out unscathed? We tend to focus on the bad things that do happen to us in that “why me?” mentality, but when the situation is bizarre enough, it can help to re-frame our perspective to make us realize that we’re luckier than we thought.

I’ve never had a near-death experience, but like everyone, I’ve had close calls that could have turned into a near-death experience. Sometimes it’s swerving to avoid an accident, catching myself from slipping before a hard fall or a long drop, or noticing the shady character in the shadows and taking a different route home. A lot of it has to do with being vigilant, prepared, and alert, but there is always that little something else, whether you want to call it luck or someone/thing watching out for you.

I am, I am, I am

A year before this incident, I had read Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death and devoured each of her stories chronicling her 17 brushes with death. Each situation is different in terms of how she got into the situation she was in and how she got out of it. There is no formula for survival. Like everything else in life, it’s a great mystery that’s full of lucky breaks.

I’ll never know happened to that kitten. Hopefully, it found good home, and I hope whoever gave it one knows how he was found. Besides being a good story to tell, I hope it inspired an appropriate name for the little creature who nearly met its end under my Toyota Corolla but lived to see another day and with any luck, a long, healthy life.  

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