A cat found in a Forest Preserve

Several years ago, my daughter took a short cut through the forest preserve on way home. It was early in the morning. she saw no one around so you did what we call a California rolling stop at the stop sign. Little did we know there were cameras everywhere!

Unaware of this and owning the vehicle she had driven, I was shocked to receive a ticket in the mail for said violation. Immediately, in my mind, I played the few times I ventured out. Had I gone near the preserve? No. Could this be mistaken identity? Finally, I gave in and watched the link to the video. Duh - I should have just done that and saved a lot of personal grief.

Sure enough, there was my daughter's car. The time stamp was 5:30 am. Shocker there! :) And although I saw her break lights go on, she did indeed do a California rolling stop.

My daughter wanted to fight the ticket. I had to go with her as owner of the car. We set a court date. When the date arrived we went back to the preserve. I spent quite some time looking for a "court-house" much less any buildings. We did find maintenance buildings but when I was ready to give up, we found a small dirt road. Why not? We took it. And it opened to a rather large dirt parking lot. There seemed to be buildings up and away from the lot. But there were no steps. Of course, I had dressed for court - a suit, high heels. And I had to hike to this "courthouse." When we finally made it to the top there were some small buildings. We went to one and was told to go the one that looked like a hall or small entertainment place. Already inside were two people - a ranger with an old-time projector a woman who introduced herself as the Judge.

Showtime. We were showed the video and although my daughter was driving, I asked to speak as the owner of the car. Our defense was there was a stop albeit a fast one. I pointed out you can see my daughter's break lights, right? They agreed. Now, both of these people standing in judgement were close to my age and had probably learned to drive the same way I had - so I geared the next part of our defense directly to them. "I am sure you, like me learned to stop One Mississippi, Two Mississippi." They agreed. But these kids, these millennials are in their own world they count is and I said One Mississippi... very fast. I then said it again slow as we learned. Back to fast. And reminded the Judge and ranger that the DMV does not actually give a specific amount of time for said stop and that the Mississippi time-frame has been something that we grew up and use as a standard yet legally it is not. They watched the video again and again I pointed out the brake lights. The quality of video was not great and as such the Judge reluctantly found that my daughter did stop and the therefore not guilty.

Now you might be wondering what does this have to do with the cat? I am getting to that. As we walked out of the hall, excited this teenage cat came up to us, immediately purred and then followed us down the hill to the car. When I opened the driver's door, she jumped in and quickly went over to the passenger seat and sat down as if she had done it a thousand times. Clearly, she had been domesticated and dumped. Fearing the coyotes of the Preserve we decided to foster her. We named her KeKe. Three years later I moved and one day while out walking I hear "Meow, meow." But it was like a hey you. I looked and there was Keke, it was my new neighbor who had adopted her. She had gotten the best home she could have!