10/07/2026
I get spice orders every day, all day long. And if you place an order and happen to live really close to me, there’s a decent chance I’ll just drop it off myself.
No need to involve the United States Postal Service in a journey I can accomplish with my Chevy Tahoe and 3 minutes.
When I do that, I write you a little handwritten note (I apologize in advance for the handwriting), explain why your package did not travel through the mail system, and put your shipping fee back in the package in cash. It just feels like the right thing to do.
This happens a 3 or 4 times a week. Yesterday was one of those times.
An order came in from someone in Cicero. I live in Cicero, and their house happened to be right on my way out of town while I was running errands.
As I always do, I pull into their driveway, leave the Tahoe running, leave my driver’s door open, run the spices up to their front porch, run back to the Tahoe and take off.
Entire interaction: maybe 30 seconds. Think Amazon Prime, but with less organization and money.
So I get on the highway and continue on with my day. A few minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, I see something move. Then I see something jump from my backseat onto the center console next to me.
If I’m being honest, it took my brain too long to process this information.
“Oh, look. It’s a cat...WAIT. A F*CKING CAT?!?!”
I almost parallel parked my Tahoe 360 degrees around a telephone pole. There was a cat, IN MY CAR. Apparently, while I was delivering spices at that house, a cat saw my open car door and thought:
“Finally. My Uber is here.”
This damn cat hid in the backseat, and then waited until I was on the highway to climb up front like, ‘You mind if we stop at Target?’
It was not a stray cat, it had a clear plastic collar and some sort of tracking device on the collar. Not an Apple Airtag, but something similar. But no address on the tag or phone number.
So this had to be an outdoor cat who belonged to somebody. Somebody who, presumably at that very moment, was looking at an app wondering why Mr. Whiskers was doing 67 mph down I-81.
Unfortunately, despite apparently having a feline ankle monitor, there was no address on the collar. Not even a little tag that said, “Hi, I’m Kevin. My mother is probably hysterical. Please call her.”
Now I’m almost at the store clear on the other side of the county. So I have a decision to make. Do I turn around, drive all the way back to Cicero, drop him off in his neighborhood and then drive alllllll the way back out here again to finish my errands?
In this economy? With the price of gas? Absolutely not.
Listen, I care about animals, but I’m not made of gasoline. So congratulations, cat. You’re running errands with me for the rest of the day. I’ll drop you off on the way home.
I made three stops all over Central New York with this damn cat.
And every single time I got out of the Tahoe, I was terrified, because I have leather seats and carpeted floor mats. Every time I walked back to the Tahoe, I was mentally preparing myself to find the interior shredded to bits. Nope.
Every single time I came back, there he was, laying in my passenger seat sunning him/herself. Completely relaxed. Not a care in the world.
At some point it felt like I was Driving Miss Daisy.
Eventually, after His Majesty and I completed our tour of Central New York, I drove him all the way back to his neighborhood, pulled over, opened the door and let him out.
He jumped out like this had been the plan the entire time. No thank you and no tip, I might add…
So, if this was your cat and you checked his tracker yesterday wondering how the hell he managed to travel all over Central New York...His tag wasn’t glitching.
He was temporarily kidnapped. Sorry about that. In my defense, he kidnapped himself.
And since I’ve turned accidentally kidnapping a cat into a promotional opportunity...
Come see me Thursday, October 8th at Ten Pin in Chittenango for Josh’s Jeopardy & Seasoning Show starts at 7 PM. We’ll be there at 6:30 selling spices and registering teams.
Please leave your cat at home. I can’t be trusted not to kidnap it.