The oddest thing happened to me today. My neighbor texted me this morning saying that she heard a cat crying and thought it was stuck in my car, which was parked in my driveway. I went out to look—and looked pretty thoroughly—but saw and heard nothing of a cat. I thought my neighbor must have been mistaken.

An hour later my neighbor texted me again saying the cat was still in there, but stopped crying when I went outside to look. I went out again dutifully, looked again but far more quietly for the cat, and still found no trace of it.

An hour after that, my neighbor texted me again and said that the cat was crying louder and louder, and that she wanted to call animal control to get it out of my car. She asked me if that was OK with me, and I said yes. I went out a third time, and still did not observe in any way a cat in my car.

Finally, about 10 minutes after that, while I was in my house, I opened the window and then for the first time I heard a cat crying over and over and over again. I went out and heard the cat and the sound was coming from the engine block of my car. I still couldn’t see a cat though and did not know what to do.

Fortunately, a police officer and the animal control officer in my town came over and, after about half an hour of trying, were able to pluck out a tiny, tiny kitten that had m crawled beneath my car’s engine and lodged itself in there. Fortunately everything is all right with my car and nothing bad happened to the cat. They took it away in a cardboard box I gave them, and presumably brought it to a shelter.