diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index e5cfd99e..88e2b4f5 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -2,4 +2,5 @@
 MANIFEST
 coverage.xml
 nosetests.xml
-pylint.txt
\ No newline at end of file
+pylint.txt
+*.pyc
diff --git a/requests/core.py b/requests/core.py
index 22c25d22..80ff5f8a 100644
--- a/requests/core.py
+++ b/requests/core.py
@@ -111,6 +111,9 @@ class Request(object):
 
         _handlers = []
 
+        if self.cookiejar != None:
+            _handlers.append(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(self.cookiejar))
+
         if self.auth:
             if not isinstance(self.auth.handler, (urllib2.AbstractBasicAuthHandler, urllib2.AbstractDigestAuthHandler)):
                 auth_manager.add_password(self.auth.realm, self.url, self.auth.username, self.auth.password)
@@ -119,6 +122,7 @@ class Request(object):
 
             _handlers.append(self.auth.handler)
 
+        if _handlers:
             _handlers.extend(get_handlers())
             opener = urllib2.build_opener(*_handlers)
             return opener.open
@@ -183,7 +187,10 @@ class Request(object):
         if not self.sent or anyway:
             try:
                 opener = self._get_opener()
-                resp =  opener(req)
+                resp = opener(req)
+
+                if self.cookiejar != None:
+                    self.cookiejar.extract_cookies(resp, req)
             except urllib2.HTTPError, why:
                 self._build_response(why)
                 self.response.error = why
@@ -195,7 +202,6 @@ class Request(object):
         else:
             self.response.cached = True
 
-
         self.sent = self.response.ok
 
         return self.sent
@@ -406,7 +412,7 @@ def request(method, url, **kwargs):
     data = kwargs.pop('data', dict()) or kwargs.pop('params', dict())
 
     r = Request(method=method, url=url, data=data, headers=kwargs.pop('headers', {}),
-                cookiejar=kwargs.pop('cookies', None), files=kwargs.pop('files', None),
+                cookiejar=kwargs.pop('cookiejar', None), files=kwargs.pop('files', None),
                 auth=kwargs.pop('auth', auth_manager.get_auth(url)))
     r.send()
 
diff --git a/test_requests.py b/test_requests.py
index 177ed9f0..97d0e55a 100644
--- a/test_requests.py
+++ b/test_requests.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
 import unittest
+import cookielib
 
 import requests
 
@@ -114,6 +115,15 @@ class RequestsTestSuite(unittest.TestCase):
         self.assertFalse(r.error)
         r.raise_for_status()
         
+    def test_cookie_jar(self):
+        """
+        .. todo:: This really doesn't test to make sure the cookie is working
+        """
+        jar = cookielib.CookieJar()
+        self.assertFalse(jar)
+
+        requests.get('http://google.com', cookies=jar)
+        self.assertTrue(jar)