This is a true story, as are all of my submissions (to answer those who have asked “Where do you come up with all this stuff?” The trick is to have an insane family and take notes).

My husband, Derek, works in the warehouse of an oatmeal milling plant. He hates oatmeal. So do our two daughters. But I love it, and he brings it home in fifty pound bags. I also make a lot of granola bars. The kids don’t eat them either, because they contain yucky stuff like dried cranberries and blueberries, almonds, and pecans. But I digress.

One day Derek was loading a truck that would be taking a load of oatmeal to Nebraska. Little did he know that as he was loading, a small stowaway crept in unnoticed, hiding among the pallets. Derek sealed off the truck, signed the paperwork, and sent the driver on his way.

The stowaway managed to get through the border check stop undetected. No one noticed until the truck pulled into its destination in Nebraska, when the trailer was unsealed and the doors opened.

The one stowaway had multiplied! A mother cat had somehow managed to get a free ride into the United States while giving birth to five kittens!

Sorry to say, but I don’t know what happened to the illegal immigrant family. Perhaps they were given refuge in a church with a mouse problem. (Do Canadian cats need green cards to catch mice in the United States?) As far as I know, they were not deported back to Canada, although the contaminated load of oatmeal was refused. Derek asked a few people who live near the plant if anyone was missing a very pregnant mother cat, but he couldn’t find her owners.

And that is the tale of my husband, the cat/kitten smuggler. To be fair, he didn’t know about the stowaway until the people in Nebraska called. So Derek’s only culpability was that he had been in charge of loading the truck.