If you don’t want to go to the store, you need to stop hiding in my car. Also, if you stick your head out and go “Prrrp?” while I’m driving, it’s a distraction.
Back home.
Back home.
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Of course I have to get stuff out of my car / SUV when I arrive at the barn. And put it all back when I leave. (In addition to the lbs of stuff kept at the barn.)
Fortunately the barn cat is talky and likes to direct attention to himself, even while thoroughly exploring my car. Including the more hidden spots. I haven’t yet accidentally taken him home.
The barn cat likes most of my car.
Except for being offended and outraged to detect that a dog frequently occupies the back seat [but isn’t allowed at the barn]. Barn cat has spoken to me very pointedly about this error. However, now barn cat seems resigned to putting it down to regrettable but unfixable human idiocy that, clearly, this dog foolishness continues to occur.
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One of our orangies likes to sneak in client cars and sleep in the back window, as much out of reach as possible. it usually takes two people to get him out! I don’t know what he would do if someone drove off with him.
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Back in the Day, barncat stowed away in a trunk that went to a weekend show an hour’s drive from the barn.
Commercial shipper took trunks along with horses.
IIRC, groom got the job of Ubering him back home.
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Ha! He looks like a stowaway my friends had once. She and a friend were taking their horses from PA to OH (about 3 hours) for a cross-country schooling. After they unloaded the horses, they were busy getting tacked up when a striped kitty suddenly appeared.
One friend comments to the other “Hey, that cat looks like Ginger” (one of our barn cats). The other friend takes a closer look and says “That’s because it is Ginger.” Apparently, Ginger was taking a nap in the trailer somewhere and went un-noticed during loading. They put him in the dressing room for safe-keeping, rode, then let him ride in the truck with them on the way home.
Being totally attached (as a fellow boarder) to all our barn kitties, I was so thankful they noticed/recognized him and that he got home safely to us. After that, everyone double-checked all cars/trucks/trailers for him before leaving the barn.
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I made a quick stop at my friends barn to grab some ropes for her. Left the drivers door open. My pickup is a 4 door. Somehow her dog got onto the floor in the back, she never made a sound until I was halfway to the hay field which was about six miles away. Her dog, a chubby older lab never got into their vehicles, she did not like riding in cars. When I got to the field I drove up to their truck and she saw her dog sitting in the backseat. The look on her face was so funny. Total shock that her dog was riding around with me. I dropped the rope off and took the dog back home, but she (the dog) never got into my vehicle again. No idea why she wanted to try it that day.
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Years ago my barn cat hid in the farrier’s truck and got transported to his home about 45-60 minutes away.
Making a two-hour drive to pick her up was not what I envisioned for the end of the day. 
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I’m not sure what you expected with a name like Cattywampus…
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At a horse show somebody came from Canada with one of the barn cats in the trailer. They had to get all the paperwork faxed down so they could get back across the border with the cat.
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In a local showing community, the story went around that, at a popular show, an easily recognizable barn cat hid in one of the visiting trailers and was transported about 3 hours away when they returned home.
On discovery the visitor let the owner know, and said that they planned to return for the next show in about 2 months. They would confine the barn cat and take care of it, and bring it with them then.
Cat was reported to have enjoyed its vacation and all the attention it got. Cat was returned home per the plan.
From then on, at every show at their facility, the owner farm publicly asked all showers to please check for this barn cat before they left. And any barn cat before they left any facility they were visiting. From now until eternity. 
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We had a really nice cat in the shedrow at the track for a week or three until one night my daughter and I were talking to a lovely older trainer who had their horse in the race paddock next to us and he mentioned that his granddaughter’s favorite cat had gotten into his trailer one race night and disappeared. We very sadly handed him over when he was ready to go home. Kitty in question had half a mustache so was really easy to ID.
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On the breeding farm I worked at, owners came to pick up yearlings in the fall to take to Florida (from Illinois), and I guess one of the barn cats wanted to spend the winter in the sun 
.
She came back in the spring, and she was known for the rest of her life as “The Florida Cat”
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Who wouldn’t? Smart cat. 
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Years ago my then BO/trainer looks a couple of kids to an A show. When the stopped at a truck stop for gas they found one of the barn cats in the trailer the hard way. The cat made a break for freedom when the door opened. Fortunately one of the kids was quick enough to grab the cat.
They stopped at a pet store and got a harness and leash, and had the cat as a mascot for that show.
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That’s the scary part!
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The cat instinct to explore new spaces, especially hidden ones, has not updated to note that some of those places are on wheels. Attached to motors. That travel.
From time to time, I’ve mentioned this to some of the barn cats who were in, on, and/or under my vehicle or horse trailer. They don’t seem to think it’s important at that moment.
In fact, a vehicle attached to a horse trailer, parked in the middle of the drive with all doors wide open for loading, seems to be a cat magnet. It’s like Disney World to them.
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Yep, our barn cat came to Thermal with us last fall.
I was still at home in Utah (horse and I traveling separately) when I got the frantic call 5 hours out. “What do we doooo!!! Carl Hester (name of barn cat in case you wonder,) is in the tack room!” (I am the barn certified crazy cat lady.) So I packed supplies, and he spent 5 days in the horse compartment of the LQ trailer, which he wasn’t too thrilled about.
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We had a barn cat that loved vehicles. He never made it to a show, but he came close a few times. Several people drove him part way home in their cars, including at least one vet who then learned to do a “Dice sweep” before leaving. The most epic moment was when he left the property on top of the cab of a shoer’s truck. Fortunately he was well known in the neighborhood and a neighbor flagged down the truck, retrieved the cat, and called the barn owner who came down with a golf cart to pick him up.
A more recent barn cat did go to a show. He went into the utility trailer when it was getting loaded and no one noticed. The trailer went to the show, got opened and stayed opened for several hours while they set up. Fortunately, he didn’t leave during this time or we may never have seen him again. I have a vision of him looking outside and thinking “Oops!!” The groom then parked the trailer, went to get something to eat and to take a shower and came back to sleep on a cot he set up in there. And, there was Garfield, asleep on his pillow. Meanwhile, everyone at the barn had been frantically searching for him. He spent the first day of the show in a large dog crate before getting transported back to the barn.
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We were driving on a two lane paved country road going about 45mph. There was a pick up truck ahead of us and to our horror we saw a cat sitting under it on the transmission (?) We honked our horn and waved our arms (thankfully this was before road rage became a thing) and they stopped. There was no shoulder so neither of us could pull off the road.
The driver got out and (due to the toll it had taken on us imagining the possibility of an horrible outcome) we were reduced to pointing and saying “there’s a cat!” It was their cat, and thankfully, through either fear or docility it didn’t move when the truck stopped, and the driver was able to pick it up.
Years off our lives I tell you.
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