It took a combined effort of four Rock Community firefighters and some customers at Dave’s Diner in Arnold to free and then capture an elusive kitten after it got trapped somewhere underneath an SUV and a woman unwittingly gave the cat a ride to the restaurant, 529 Jeffco Blvd.
After firefighters freed the kitten from the woman's SUV, it took about 20 minutes to capture it because the animal continually escaped from their grasps, ran and hid. During the chase, the kitten hid in or under three other vehicles in the parking lot – a car, the crew’s firetruck and another SUV, firefighter Lane Carl said.
The Rock Community Fire Protection District got a call about the kitten at approximately 7 a.m. May 15 after an Arnold woman heard meowing from under her Chevrolet Equinox parked outside the restaurant.
“This sweet lady on the phone said, ‘I don’t know who else to call; I think there is a cat in my car,’” Carl said.
She said the woman told firefighters she had heard a cat when she left her home in the Vogel Road and Richardson Road area but she thought it was just near her SUV. However, as she drove to Dave’s Diner, she kept hearing the meowing.
Carl said she, along with Capt. Bryan Menke and firefighters Zach Kalevik and Josh Jung, met the woman in the parking lot.
“We started hearing this meow (coming from the SUV),” Carl said. “We tried to get it to keep talking to us so we could pinpoint an area where the cat was.”
Eventually, the firefighters determined the meowing was coming from near the wheel well on the driver’s side. Carl said they raised the SUV on a jack, took off the tire and opened the inside fender cover to look for the kitten.
“That’s when this little cat jumps out,” she said. “We were expecting the way this thing was meowing for it to be a grown cat. But out runs this kitten, which then ran as fast as it could to another car.”
Carl said Menke went into Dave’s Diner to find the car owner, who came out and opened the car’s hood. The kitten was on top of the engine, and Menke picked up the kitten and handed it Carl.
“Then this ninja cat starts squirming, and it gets loose,” Carl said. “Then it ran underneath the firetruck. We were like, ‘Oh no, not the truck.’’
She said the kitten climbed on top of one of the wheels, and she tried to grab the kitten, but it again bounded off and got under another SUV in the parking lot.
Carl said Menke went back into Dave’s Diner to find the owner of that SUV, who came out into the parking lot. She said Kalevik, who was on his first full shift with Rock Fire, got under the SUV and could see the kitten but could not reach it.
Carl said the firefighters got a cardboard box, and the owner of the SUV got underneath it and used a window-washing tool to coax the kitten out from under the vehicle.
“We were spaced out around this vehicle to capture it,” she said. “All the while, we were debating if we could have everyone leave so it would have no more cars to run under.
“Zach finally got a hold of one of its legs and was able to get it out and hold onto to it. We put it in the box. We didn’t feel like real professionals at the time, but we got the cat.”
Carl said the firefighters took the kitten to House 1 at 1533 Jeffco Blvd. in Arnold and contacted Goode Life Rescue, which took the kitten.
“They picked up the cat and said they would take care of it and get the kitten to someone who will take care of it,” she said.
It was the second time this month Carl had rescued a cat.
On May 3, she rescued a kitten from under a mobile home in the 2000 block of Plaza Drive in Arnold that was on fire, and another firefighter, Jon Roth, found a different kitten inside the home and rescued it.
Those kittens were transferred to Kitten Caboodle in Edwardsville, Ill., and are expected to be adopted.
Carl is in her third year as a firefighter, and before this month, she had not been involved in a cat rescue.
“I guess I just have that special touch,” Carl joked.