Only the most dedicated readers might recall the tale of the cat that wanted to go to Purdue. It’s worth retelling to set up an even wilder cat story.

Once upon a time … no, it really happened! Our oldest daughter, Allison, was heading to Purdue University for her freshman year. I was driving our old red stick-shift pickup with stuff for her room, headed from our home in Johnson County, Ind., to West Lafayette, via Interstate 74 to U.S. 231. My wife, Carla, and the kids followed in our van with more stuff. We stopped at a gas station at Crawfordsville. That’s when the fun began.

Getting out of the truck, I saw a cat meandering near the bushes along the edge of the parking lot. “Dad, that’s our cat!” one of the kids shrieked.

Say what? No way, how could one of our barn cats be here?

“Dad, it really is our cat. We must save it!” a young voice screamed.

 An uneasy feeling overtook me. It really was our cat. The sucker apparently nestled on top of the battery box and stayed there until we stopped.

“Well, I guess the gas station has a new cat,” I said.

“Dad, we can’t leave it!” shrieked four kids at once.

Now what? A hundred miles from home with a barn cat that wouldn’t ride in a truck cab or van to Purdue and back home. Leave it to the kids. They had the answer. Find an animal shelter. On a Saturday morning? Right.

Carla found an animal shelter that was open — in Lafayette. We caught the cat. Allison and I took the truck to campus, and Carla and the rest of the clan diverted to Lafayette with the cat.

Better tale

Like that story? This one is better, partly because it didn’t happen to me!

“We keep a four-wheel-drive tractor that we use for drilling soybeans in a shed down the road,” Tom Osborn, Stockwell, Ind., explained, as I sat in his office, admiring his calico cat.

“One year, we got it out right before we were ready to begin planting,” he continued. “We ran hard for three days in a row because the weather was good. Then the next day, when someone was walking around the tractor while it was parked, they heard strange noises. Then they saw a tiny paw sticking out along the side of the hood.

“Sure enough, a momma cat crawled up under the hood and made her nest. She kept the kittens there after they were born. There were five in all, and they were just tiny things. But they rode there for all three days that tractor was in the field!”

Tom still has one of the cats. It’s the one that runs the place and feels at home in the middle of his desk. Her name? John Deere. What else would you name a cat, boy or girl, born inside a John Deere tractor? Imagine the tales that cat could tell if she could only talk!