Kitten rescued by Peters Township firefighters
Cat-astrophe averted.
At around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Peters Township firefighters responded to a very different kind of emergency call at a Peters Township home, where they rescued a kitten that became trapped in the undercarriage of a car that it had crawled into.
Jackie Marshall told firefighters she believes the kitten hitched a ride in her car Wednesday night while she was at a dance lesson at a Peters Township dance studio.
When Marshall got into her car after leaving the dance studio, she heard what she thought was a cat meowing in the back seat.
She looked around the car, but didn’t see anything.
As she pulled out of the parking lot, Marshall heard a meow again, so she stopped the car, grabbed a flashlight and looked inside and outside the car.
When she arrived home, Marshall popped open the trunk and hood, and thoroughly searched the car, but didn’t see a cat, so she went to bed wondering if she had imagined it.
On Thursday morning, her husband, Brandon Marshall, woke her to ask for her help because he thought there was a cat in their garage.
“I said, ‘I think there’s a cat in my car,'” said Marshall.
The couple spent an hour searching on their hands and knees and backs inside and underneath the car for the feline and heard it meowing, but weren’t able to see it.
That’s when Marshall called the fire department.
“We’ve rescued cats before, but it doesn’t happen all the time,” said a Peters Township Fire Department member. “We’ve retrieved cats that have gotten stuck in trees or HVAC venting, or even behind drywall, but not very often from cars.”
Firefighters Cody Gump and Zach Basar responded, and within minutes they had jacked up the car, removed a rear tire and spotted the kitten wedged in a tight space, and extricated it, unharmed.
“We get animal calls all the time, and usually they’re pretty simple, but this one went into more depth. He was wedged in pretty tight,” said Gump.
Gump and Basar then waited patiently, with Gump holding the kitten, while Marshall went knocking on neighbors’ doors in search of a cat carrier.
Four houses later, a neighbor with cats lent Marshall a crate, and Gump – who earlier had caught the kitten in mid-air after it leaped from a storage tote Marshall’s mother had emptied for a temporary home – placed the kitten safely inside.
Marshall scheduled an appointment for Friday with a veterinarian to make sure the feline is healthy and OK.
And, she named the kitten “Prez,” since the kitty was found in her Subaru Impreza.
Gump was happy with the “pawsitive” outcome.
“It’s obviously rewarding to help save an animal’s life, and I’m glad he survived,” said Gump.
Marshall was grateful for the efforts of the firefighters and the help of her neighbors.
“The firefighters were fantastic, they were there within 10 minutes and they got (the cat) out in no time,” she said. “My neighbors were so helpful. It was a team effort.”