BOSTON, MA (WCVB/CNN) - Paul Zine is still scratching his head and staring under his hood trying to figure out how a 4-month-old stray kitten wound up a stowaway.
“Stunned. I just couldn’t believe it,” Zine said “You gotta figure that - 105 miles at highway speed, that little thing was in my engine compartment.”
The kitten, who was probably seeking the heat of the engine the night before, traveled all the way from Natick, Massachusetts to Wollingford, Connecticut. Zine had no idea the cat was there until he arrived at his relative’s Toyota dealership to get an oil change.
“The service manager comes out and says to me, ‘Do you have a cat?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t have a cat.’ He says, ‘Does your neighbor have a cat?’ Then I was confused. I said, ‘No. I don’t know. Why?’”
It turns out when the service technician opened the hood, a cat jumped out. Technician James Hastings said the front corner was exactly where he found the kitten.
“I didn’t know if it was alive or not. Then, it turned its head and it looked at me,” Hastings said “We ended up spending a good 20 minutes chasing the cat around the shop before we were able to get a hold of him.”
Hastings didn’t want the cat to wind up in a shelter, so he took him to the vet, and then he took him home. He named the kitten Tacoma - as in Toyota’s toughest truck.
And while Paul Zine is more of a dog person, he is relieved that the kitten had enough lives to hitch himself to Connecticut, and a real home.
“It was a miracle,” Zine said.
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