Last Auto Reviews Blog: KITT’s cats

kitten hiding in a Trans Am

After a decade and a half of shooting cars, you’d think you’d seen it all. This past Friday made a liar out of me once again.

My feature-car victim, the original-owner of a 1984 Trans Am 5.0 HO that will be seen in Muscle Machines at some point in the future, has a driveway that backs onto an alley. That alley is the home of, among other things, a family of feral cats (well, really one cat and at least four kittens) that need to keep warm. Much shooing-away of kitties from under the Pontiac has occurred in recent days.

Though not enough, apparently. I invited Hideki, editor of the Japanese magazine IGNITE which is focused entirely on American cars and American car culture, with me on the shoot. We followed the Pontiac in our photo vehicle, and suddenly there materialized a cat in the road: It simply fell out of the back of the car. It tucked and rolled, and shot over to the curb before I could register the strange notion that I just watched a cat fall out of a car chassis. It’s not every day I think to myself “That Trans Am just gave birth! To a cat!”

The owner immediately pulled over, and claimed she heard screaming. All we could see of the second cat (yes, a second one) was its belly, back legs and tail, scrambling for traction and finding none, smack-dab in the geographical center of the car. After jacking up the T/A, Hideki told us that its head was somehow wedged in around the driveshaft, torque arm, transmission cross-brace and driveshaft tunnel. Somehow, up in that metal mishagoss, was one very alert and freaked-out kitty face.

Minutes turn into an hour. We took its occasional plaintive howls as a good sign – it was still alive, right? The fire department wanted nothing to do with it (they get cats out of trees, right? Or is that only in kids’ stories?), so the owner called AAA, Animal Control and her local vet. AAA was on the scene first, and after about ten minutes driver Isaac manages to pull apart a couple of the pieces wedging the kitty’s head in (probably the driveshaft and torque arm) and the kitty dropped to the pavement, free. A minor abrasion on the side of its head, and none the worse for wear.

And then it sought refuge in the front bumper.

We pop the hood and can’t see anything–the radiator support is too huge. Under go Hideki and Isaac again, Hideki brandishing a screwdriver to loosen up the soft front fascia to open up the cavernous area inside the bumper. Eventually, he found the kitty in question – as well as two more – each of which promptly escaped and hid underneath the AAA truck, ran across the street, you name it. Five grown adults ducking traffic and trying to corral three little fluffballs appeared to be something out of a bad family comedy, but we got ‘em.

This took 90 minutes, by which time it was dark. The car did not get photographed, except for what you see here. The rest will come in a couple of weeks’ time.

When Animal Control confessed that the little guys would be euthanized in their hands (anything under 8 weeks and found after hours is treated thusly, we were told) the owner took them in and, at this writing, found homes for the lot of them.