Thursday morning’s freezing temperatures nearly spelled disaster for a well-traveled gray and white kitten before a warm-hearted — and patient — mechanic came to its rescue.
The kitten’s journey is believed to have started in Palm Coast, but the story begins in the parking lot of the Daytona Beach Best Buy on West International Speedway Boulevard.
That’s where Bill Hayes noticed a man looking under the hood of his Honda Civic.
"He was parked next to me and I noticed that there were three people around the hood of this young man's car," Bill Hayes said. "I heard a cat meow and had to check it out."
The cat was stuck. Hayes helped the car owner try to remove a plastic cover for the front grille, but there were bolts the screwdriver couldn't get out. The driver couldn’t be reached for comment.
"It [the kitten] was stuck between the front grille and transmission radiator, not the regular radiator, and I think that's why it didn't get burned," Hayes explained.
After failing to free the kitten, Hayes met the driver at Gary Yeomans Honda on Nova Road just before lunch time, saying he wanted to make sure the kitten was OK and had a place to go.
That’s where mechanic Chris Terrell enters the story. As soon as they parked the car in the garage, the kitten jumped out of the Honda and ran up under an employee’s Chrysler Sebring.
It took mechanics more than an hour to put the Sebring on lifts, remove splash shields from under the car and take the kitten to a far better place.
"On my lunch break I just took it home,” Terrell said. “It was scared and had a really crappy day."
Terrell isn’t sure if he’s going to keep the kitten, which hasn’t been given a name yet.
"I haven't introduced it to my cat yet, but I also have multiple coworkers who said they would take it," Terrell said.
Hayes, the bystander, left the dealership impressed.
"They went above and beyond to help get that cat," Hayes said. "It would have been dead otherwise."
With another cold morning forecast for Friday, the American Veterinary Medical Foundation recommends drivers check underneath the hood of their cars, banging on the hood and honking the horn before starting the engine. If you have a pet of your own, they recommend keeping them inside when the weather is cold.