Toddy the blind cat took a car ride to be part of Grandpa's annual Christmas card picture and ended up with an extended stay in the family vehicle. The reason: G. locked Toddy - and my keys - in the minivan.

The original photo op, which included Grandpa, the girls, Toddy and Grandpa's hot rods (view photo), went off without a hitch (as you know, Toddy has plenty of modeling practice).

But the trouble began when I asked G. to put our furry family member in the van so we could get a few pictures without him.

The second we were done, G. ran back to the van to check on Toddy.

I told her to leave the cat alone for a minute and come into the house to look at the photos.

She ignored me.

I called to her again but she continued to hug Toddy in the car and ignore me.

Then I yelled at her to get her butt in the house. She finally listened (Why must I be forced to yell? I honestly don't like to.) and took it upon herself to lock the car.

Apparently protecting Toddy from the evils of Grandpa's driveway - located in a nice, quite neighborhood - trumped her common sense.

The real kicker was that she opened the driver's side door to engage the automatic car locks. My keys were in plain view on the driver's seat. I left them there because I didn't have a pocket to carry them in while taking photos and didn't think we'd be staying long anyway.

But really, it's a mystery as complex as the building of the pyramids if you asked G. why she didn't see those keys, let alone what possessed her to lock the doors in the first place.

Then the realization hit me that my spare key to the van was in my wallet, which was in the backpack that was also now locked in the van.

After a short rant about putting on our "thinking caps" that I directed at G. (I am hardly a paragon of motherhood), I went inside the house to resume downloading the photos I had taken earlier to cool off.

And don't think I escaped comments for my role in this debacle. Several times Grandpa reminded me on the importance of a hide-a-key and leaving a window cracked open.

Thanks for the timely advice Dad.

But in the spirit of trying to help the girls, Grandpa took them back out to the driveway to try to jimmy the lock.

It didn't work.

I called Fino at work to explain the situation and after some snickering on both our parts, he agreed with me that it wasn't a dire emergency and that Toddy would be OK to wait a couple of hours until he could get to Grandpa's with his set of keys (it wasn't overly hot or cold out so at least that was running in our favor).

Because really, how was I going to explain to someone at AAA that my blind cat was locked in the family minivan at Grandpa's house?

I went outside a little while later to check on the crew trying to rescue Toddy and found Grandpa trying to stick a wire through the window, G. in tears and L. writing in the layer of dust on the van.

Everyone has their own special way of dealing with a crisis.

We left the van a while later to return home with the promise from Grandpa to check periodically on Toddy.

Fino arrived a couple of hours later in Grandpa's driveway to find Toddy curled up on the van's driver seat. He unlocked the door and drove Toddy home.

Toddy received a heart-felt homecoming from the girls who went running into the driveway as soon as Fino pulled into it.

I lectured G. that she was banned from ever locking the car door again. Afterward she reminded me that it wasn't nice that I laughed about Toddy's situation. Now that things were resolved I calmly reminded her that she was darn lucky her mom had a good sense of humor.