Bet, Babe. Slide a piece of the porter. Drinks, I run the java.

For starters, yes the title of this post is the "Jive dinner order" from the movie Airplane!. One day I'll post the correct and complete transcript of the jive movie quotes. (None of the versions on the web are both complete and correct.) Once we'd finished checking my brother and family in for their flight, we had about 3 or 4 hours to kill. As our tummies grumbled we decided to search for food. Yeah, airport food. With our huge list of two options we went for the Cinnabons. These were quickly dubbed "Cinna-bombs" because within 3-5 bites both mine and my father's rolls exploded into our laps. Cinnamon and cream cheese frosting everywhere. It was at that point I realized why they give you napkins and a fork, but I am curious why they don't offer plates and a beach towel sized wet-nap. We soon decided that joking about "Cinnabombs" was not a wise idea in an airport with TSA all around. (I have found TSA members to be rather humorless.) As I was wiping the cream cheese frosting from my hands and goatee and eyebrows, I couldn't help but wonder what the cat would be doing for snacks. Actually I should probably back up and explain how the cat got to the airport in the first place. It was actually quite easy to convince Huckleberry to go on the flight. You'll recall he is, in fact, a German born cat. Once we told him the flight was going to Germany, he clicked his heels together (all 4 of them) and stormed off to his room to pack his bags and get his spiked kitty helmet. No one had the heart to tell him he wouldn't be allowed off the plane in Germany, since it was a layover. He balked when we presented him with the Kitty Karrier, of course. He began to complain about the Geneva Convention and being a Kitty Prisoner of War (KaPOW). Once we told him the carrier was made by Volkswagen he eagerly climbed in, remarked on the fabulous headroom but lack of cup holders. You may recall Huckleberry has a bit of an Old Bay addiction. When he requested we pack him some Old Bay for the ride we had to tell him no. We figured the cat would likely pass through the TSA security checks but Old Bay would probably not. This did bring up an interesting thought: When you carry on a bag, you have to send it through the scanner or get it hand checked. When you bring a carry on cat carrier, they hand check it. Sort of. Seems to me that would be a great place to smuggle some drugs in or out of the country. TSA doesn't want to mess with a pissed of German cat, and if the drug sniffing puppies go crazy, you can blame it on the whole cat/dog thing anyway. But Huckleberry came up with an even more sinister plan. He proposed being an "Old Bay Mule." Yes, Huckleberry was proposing an Old Bay "suppository" to get his smack through customs and security. As he said "They'll never check THERE!" Besides if they did decide to fully search Huckleberry or run him through the X-ray machine, wouldn't that be called a "Cat Scan?" Many years ago, one of the best web sites on the web was www.cat-scan.com (no longer working). It was the brainchild of a guy named "CliffyB" who later became the big name video game designer, Cliff Bleszinski. The gist of the story behind Cat Scans was NOT what you think. There's nothing medical involved. In fact, he got the idea as he was scanning some documents and his cat jumped on the desk and was walking in his way (as cats always seem to do). In one quick move, CliffyB scooped up his cat, stuffed it in the scanner, and hit the button. The resulting image changed the world of pet imagery. This website gives a brief explanation of the process as well as some (poor) Cat Scans. It was so popular that CliffyB even sponsored a contest. Sadly I can find no archives of any of the contest pictures, but I did find the rules of the contest on this web page. The scans were absolutely hilarious, and CliffyB's comments were the icing on the KittyCake. Sadly, I think the Animal Rights nuts finally got to be too much with their constant (unsubstantiated) claims that the scanners would make the cats blind. (This was greeted by Cat-Scans of kitties wearing sunglasses, or with their paws over their eyes.) So back to Huckleberry at the airport. His demands for his own Cinnabon were ignored. (Cleaning cinnamon and cream cheese frosting out of cat fur is not the sort of thing you want to do in an airport bathroom.) We did manage to fix him a small bowl of water, which he promptly flipped over as an obvious form of prisoner protest. He then took the water bowl and began clanging it on the front of the cage singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and chanting "KIT-MO! KIT-MO!" we ignored this as best we could. Fast forward to Thursday. Since my brother had to leave a car behind, and no one wanted to store it for a few years til his return the decision was made to sell it. Where do you go when you want to get rid of a car quickly? Well you park it on the side of the road in Atlanta with the keys on the dashboard. But if you'd like to get some money for it and avoid insurance fraud, you go to CarMax. As we're sitting in the waiting room for the paperwork to be finalized, I glanced over at the snack machine and saw the solution to all of our problems (though 24 hours too late).If we'd only had a bag or two of Old Bay chips, the whole trip would have run much smoother. Toss a bag in as they board the plane and there likely wouldn't be a peep (or meow) out of him for the rest of the flight. I think I may mail him a bag or two. But given the tight restrictions on international mail, I need to see if smuggling in Old Bay is a criminal offense or not.