Driving Miss Marla....

A friend noticed this kiddie car being thrown out, and suggested Marla might like it. I took a look at it, saw that it was in good condition - part of the roof had come loose - and more importantly, could fit in the back seat of my car.

Unfortunately, I could never get Marla to sit up in the car, as though she was driving or a passenger, though there was a blanket in it. But there was this shot, in which Marla is changing the oil.

I always pictured Marla as driving a staid, two-tone 1950s two-door sedan. I also pictured it as being tempermental (which is another story), which is when Marla's driving habits also changed.

Marla had a habit of being a bit wild, yelling out the window, "Get out of the way! You drive like Marla's grandmother!" when she was actually driving. She had a habit of holding a map upside-down (so much for being a Mouse Scout) with two paws, using her tail for steering, not looking up.

Despite this, she had a dislike for bad drivers. Marla would frequently appear in a driver's window, her face blackened, telling the driver, "Do you know you have an oil leak, sir?" (In real life, a car that was tailgating me one time and passed me at some ridiculous speed wound up on the side of the road with some sort of trouble... I had pictured Marla either hopping back in my car or sticking her tongue at him, wagging her paws in her ears.)

There's a hardware store by my parents' house which sells metal kiddie cars... Moo had the police car, because it was black and white like her; Cosmo had the pink airplane, because he's a pretty, not a handsome, cat; and Marla had the car with the racing flames on the side.

And for some reason, Marla's driver's license said she was like 103 on it... don't know why a cat would need a fake birthday on her license, don't wanna know.

One of the original Three Cats, Drey, also has a Marla story. I saw some driver leave a cup of coffee on their roof and I pictured Marla and Drey sitting on top of the car, passing a pot of coffee between the two of them. "Cheers!" "Cheers!" the other would say, clinking the cups together.

"Where are we going, Marla?"

"Oh, it matters not the destination, Drey. What matters is the journey. Cheers!"