Preeti Rakhra could hear the sounds of a cat stuck in her brand-new SUV; she just couldn’t figure out exactly where it was or how to get it out. “We noticed that the meow sound was coming from my side of where I was parked in the garage,” Rakhra told CTV News Calgary. “(My husband) said to me, ‘You know, there’s a cat in your car.’” That was on Saturday evening, and on Sunday a mobile mechanic came to try and free the feline—to no avail. That’s when the decision was made to try and drive the vehicle to the dealership where it was purchased, with the cat somewhere inside as a stowaway. The drive to Lexus of Royal Oak in northwest Calgary was only about five minutes long on Monday morning, but it sure felt longer, Rakhra said. “I could hear the cat; it was meowing. And I said, ‘OK, stay with me. We’re almost there.’ So as I brought my car into service, everybody was so fascinated by this because they said they’ve never, ever experienced this before,” she said. The vehicle was lifted, parts were removed and several of the vehicle technicians gathered around to try and rescue the stuck kitten. “I just see one of my coworkers, Jordan, and he just grabbed the cat out of the undercarriage of the car, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my goodness, there’s a live cat in there.’ And I’m like, ‘Wow, crazy,’” said Bien Icuspit III, an apprentice technician at Lexus of Royal Oak. The kitten was cleaned up, fed and taken to a veterinarian. It didn’t have a collar or a microchip, so one of the technicians decided to adopt the cat. “Very unusual. You know, there’s lots of times I’ve seen online where a lot of shops are finding animals in cars and stuff like that. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s something that probably would never happen to us,” said Icuspit. “And then I come in one day and it’s like, there’s a cat in the car, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s something you don’t see every day.’” It’s still not known how the cat ended up in the vehicle’s engine bay or when it first climbed inside. The technician who adopted the cat is still deciding on a name.
