Reading this post at the Hemmings Blog about 4 kittens hiding away in a 1984 Trans Am (above) they were bringing to a photo shoot reminded me of the two times I had something similar happen.
The first was back in about 1995 and, ironically, was hiding in a Camaro Z-28 much like that T/A. A coworker in advertantly brought it to work under the hood, traveling a few miles down I-696 to our company in Royal Oak. They managed to coax the kitty out of the Z ad brought it inside. Unfortunately, it got away from them and headed straight for the back of the building where the owner stored his mid 80's 911 Targa.
Yep, the kitty crawled up inside the Porsche, well up inside, on top of the transmission as best as they could tell.
The owner arrived later that morning and decided he could flush it out. So, he opened the back door and fired up the Porsche. Several revs toward red-line should have done it, but after he shut it down there was the sad cry of a very scared kitty, still tucked up inside that 911.
At lunch a couple guys went to the grocery and brought some cat food back. That did it. The cat came out and one of the guys took it home for his girlfriend.
Story number two involves Cally, shown above. Cally belonged to friends of ours in Missouri who once lived here in Columbus but now live only about 45 miles from Maria's family in mid-Missouri. We visited them while in MO and they had just gotten 3 kittens as mousers for their 7 acre property. We had a good visit and headed back to her parents.
That night, outside their apartment, were two cats that looked eerily like two of theirs, Cally and Shadow. So, we called, and sure enough, their cats hadn't been seen since we left. We went out in a snow storm and tried to find them, but we could not.
The next day we were supposed to leave for home, but the snow delayed our return by a day. On the 600 mile trip home, we stopped for gas and fast food as well as at Cracker Barrel for dinner and later, I ran the van through a car wash.
The next morning I went to the garage to go to the post office to get the mail. When I opened the door to the garage, there on the steps was Cally, She had ridden in the van 45 miles back to Maria's parents apartment, camped out in the van for a day through the snow storm and then rode the 600 miles across MO, IL, IN and OH home, enduring a car wash along the way.
I closed the door and took the other car. Later, I opened the hood and found Cally sitting on top of the engine cover. I grabber her, she clawed me and bit me, at one point hanging by her jaw from my hand. (I later had to get antibiotics and a tetanus shot.) Cally scurried across the garage and crawled up inside my 1960 Thunderbird.
She lived in the garage, under the T'bird for the month of January after which she came inside to stay. She's still, about 4 years later, pretty skittish and won't stay in the same room with me.
600 miles in the engine compartment of an Odyssey will do that to ya.
Think of all that cat doo doo up in you T-bird that you can't see. See..I made your day! LOL
Na, I love hearing those stories even though I'm not too fond of cats.
Well, we did put out food and litter for her for that month and she did use it. She just almost never came out when we were around until Jessica coaxed her inside.