Jigsaw came from a rescue in Philadelphia. Her sister Puzzles, a long haired calico, caught my eye on Petfinder. I drove down to adopt Puzzles and ended up bringing two kittens home as I just couldn’t bring myself to leave the little short haired tortoise sister behind.

On the way home, I was in a traffic jam, so while sitting there, decided to take out one of my new kittens for a cuddle. Jigsaw promptly jumped on the vehicle floor and climbed up into the dashboard. I panicked. I thought my new kitten was going to climb into the engine from there and drop down on the highway among the stationary cars. I had no clue there was something called a firewall to prevent that from happening.

I pulled the car off the road and got out and looked around. No kitten. I decided I needed to check under the hood to see if there was a kitten in the engine. I had to read the owner’s manual to see how to pop the hood. That’s embarrassing to admit, but true. I’m not a car savvy person.
So, looked under the hood, no kitten there that I could see. At this point, I was attracting the attention of nearby car occupants. I explained to them what happened. Then , I saw two tiny legs drop out from behind the dash. I grabbed them and pulled. Out popped Jigsaw. I immediately returned her to the crate with her sister.

The rest of the trip home was uneventful. Puzzles and Jigsaw were incorporated into the household. They developed very different personalities. While Puzzles became  an easy going social kitty, Jigsaw became the opposite. While she would sleep curled up on my bed, she would tolerate only limited petting.

Jigsaw developed expertise as my escape artist. My large fenced in cat yard has been relatively cat proof, but Jigsaw could not be contained. She routinely scaled a tall tree that was wrapped in metal and ventured out on to a long  branch. From there she would perform a dramatic dismount,  leaping about twelve feet through the air making a hard landing on the roof of the house and jumping to the ground from there. Very similar to a large flying squirrel. I gave up trying to keep her in.

This week, Jigsaw went where all cats go after their time with us. She left me with memories of her adventures to make me smile. And her sister Puzzles to warm the bed.