As Andrea Duvall climbed into her car at 4:30 a.m. Monday, she thought she heard the faint sound of a cat meowing.
She searched her garage but couldn’t find a cat. As she backed down the driveway, she heard it again.
“I could just hear him cry, he was just mewing away as I drove,” she said.
She woke up her husband and the two searched her car. When they finally gave up and Duvall tried to drive away, they heard meowing yet again.
“He yelled, ‘It’s in your car,'” she said.
This time, they “tore the car apart,” searching the back seat, the trunk and wheel wells. “We couldn’t find him anywhere,” she said.
They finally realized that the small kitten was somewhere under the hood of her 2013 Audi A5. Not knowing what else to do, Duvall drove from her house in Woodland to downtown Vancouver.
“I drove all the way to work really, really slowly,” she said.
When she arrived to work about an hour later, the cat was still meowing. Her co-workers tried to reach up under her wheel well. The Vancouver Fire Department responded and tried to free the cat, but ultimately couldn’t help.
In hopes the cat would climb out on its own, Duvall put some chicken from a co-worker’s lunch on the ground. But after two hours, the kitten still hadn’t emerged.
“He had just been stuck in my car,” she said. “He must have been roasting hot in my car all the way from Woodland.”
Around 8 a.m., she drove her car to Les Schwab Tires on Northeast Minnehaha Street. Mark Hughes, a sales and service technician for the tire store, was checking the air on another customer’s tires when Duvall drove in.
Duvall said she must have sounded crazy when she spat out: “There’s a cat stuck in my car.”
Hesitant at first, Hughes said, “I had heard stories like that, so thought I’d check it out.”
Hughes removed the Audi’s front wheels and unbolted a plastic piece from the undercarriage of the car.
“I could see it in there,” he said. “He had his head wrapped around some wiring cable. I reached my arm up in a tight spot and got it out. Fortunately, he was still in one piece.”
The black-and-white kitten, about six inches long, was shaking and covered in grease and dirt.
“I don’t know who was happier, me or (Hughes),” Duvall said. “I was crying, he was grinning. It was sweet relief. I thought I was going to kill this cat.”
The kitten, a male that Duvall guesses to be at least 8 weeks old, suffered only a cut on one paw. Hughes and Duvall guessed that the cat’s foot had gotten stuck somewhere underneath the engine.
Karie Springer, Duvall’s co-worker, who has a kitten of her own at home, had her daughter come retrieve the cat to clean off the grime and feed him some kitten chow.
Springer and Duvall are hoping to find the cat’s owners, though they don’t know if the feline climbed into the Audi in Vancouver or in Woodland. Duvall said her garage is sealed and she hadn’t driven anywhere all weekend after getting home from work Friday.
Anyone who thinks the kitten may be theirs is asked to call Springer at 360-771-6376.
In the meantime, Duvall is calling the cat “Miracle Kitty” for having survived the 20-plus mile drive.
“He’s lucky to be alive,” Duvall said.
