This morning as I was making my tea headed out the door to take the boys to school I heard all 4 of the kids shreiking in terror.  Now it is normal to hear at least one scream every morning as the kids beat each other get loaded into the van, but it is very rare for them all to be screaming at the same time.  As I went to check on them I was run down by a herd of Ehrman children yelling that a cat was in the van.  A little background...we have no real pets (we do have an old beta fish that plays dead all day but he is hardly a pet...more decoration than anything).  All of the kids are to varying degree frightened of animals of all kinds especially dogs and cats.  Wubitu is the worst.  If there is a dog or cat in the house she will not let her feet touch the ground and screams anytime the animal comes her way.  Sifan is also scared but wants to learn to like pets (she talks nonstop about how she held my mom's cat like a baby one time).  Noah and Carter are also very very nervous around pets.  So a cat in the van was a shock for sure.  Apparently someone had left the van door open and the stray made himself at home for the night.  The kids said that when they were all buckled in waiting for me to get my tea ready to go the cat jumps out at them causing a loud mass exodus.  When I got out there I opened all of the doors to the van and waited.  Called "here kitty, kitty" and nothing happened.  We were already running late and i didn't want my face scratched off if I found the scared cat under my seat so I coaxed the kids back into the van thinking that the cat for sure escaped during the commotion.  They were all nervous the entire trip that the black cat might come back.  We dropped the boys and headed back home with no incident, other than Sifan insisting that we should keep it because it must not have a home and we could be its home :)  The girl's tumbling class was canceled so we didn't have to use the van again until we picked the boys up.  We were running late because I woke up from my nap late.  so I hurried the girls to the van and jumped in.  I thought this commercial on the radio was so weird because it had this cute meowing sound.  Then it hit me...the cat was still in the van.  I thought I had smelled a hint of dirty cat in the air when I got in.  I stopped at the corner and opened my door and waited.  A minute or so later a big black cat jumped out of the van from under my van seat!!!  I tried to remain calm not pee my pants as to not further enforce the girls' fear of animals.  Drove like a wild woman the rest of the way to pick the boys up, and picked up trash from the passenger side at stop lights.  Then I found grabbed the receipt I had been looking for and to my disgust it was covered in cat pooooo!!!!   AAAAAA!!!  Since I disturbed the turd feces it made the entire van stink to high heaven.  Thankfully I was so late to pick the boys up that none of the staff came close enough to the van to smell it.  The boys smelled it instantly and we all had to pull our shirts over our noses all the way home to keep from gagging.  This solidified in the kids' minds that they do not want any pets. Luckily for me the majority of the mess was on a USPS flat rate mailing box I wasn't using so I could just throw it in the trash.  However, how do I explain to the store that the receipt I need was pooped on by a cat that doesn't belong to me who decided to make its home in my van.....???