May 2010

Simba and Gizmo’s May Blog

A few weeks back we got to take part in something very special… the first ever Cat Drag Race! A drag strip was built at the John Force Racing headquarters in Yorba Linda, CA and fans, friends and family came out to cheer Gizmo and me on as we raced each other down the “limited edition” quarter mile.

The reason for the race was more than just to have a little feline fun. There was a national food drive coming up at the time called Stamp Out Hunger, so Ashley put together this race to promote the food drive. She built the drag strip out of canned food, and also the scoreboards, and had our sandbox at the end of the track along with a catch net that Dan created with some material from Michaels. I don’t know what they were thinking Gizmo and I were going to do, but I had no intention of ending up in a net, that’s for sure!

We wore our uniforms and of course did some press leading in to the event but come race day we were focused and ready to go. My car owner was John Force and my cat chief was Austin Coil. Gizmo’s car owner was Dan Hood, and cat chief Bernie Fedderly. Between these two teams there is a lot of experience racing so this was going to be very interesting, even for us drivers, to see how the day would go.

When it was time, we lined up on the starting line and waited for the Christmas tree to light up. I know that Gizmo is still a baby kitty, but I am pretty young as well and in very good shape. I’m constantly running up and down the stairs and I stretch every morning and watch what I eat. I wasn’t too worried about getting off the line quickly. I was more concerned about whether or not we had the tune up just right with the conditions inside the building, and of course the amount of hair I have, so I knew that this could be tricky.

The tree came down and we were off! I launched pretty good but then got in to trouble about a quarter of the way down and lost traction and had to pedal it. I got a little close to the wall, err, cans, however kept away and continued trying to get myself to hook up on all 8 and get down to the finish line first. Gizmo made a really great pass and almost won until he dropped two cylinders two paw lengths from the finish line and crossed the centerline taking out both cones in the process! It was in that moment that I knew that Gizmo was disqualified and the race was mine. It wasn’t pretty but I managed to finally cross the finish, taking the win at the first ever cat race. It was an amazing day and I was very proud of my team. We didn’t give up, even when we had struggles. We just kept our eye on the prize- the wet cat food! -Simba

I’m still picking cone out of my fur! C$@&! -Gizmo