Cat Survives 150-Mile Trip Under Car Hood

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. - For Tracker, the car ride from the Kalamazoo area
to Rochester Hills was long, and could have cost him a life or two. The
long-haired gray cat rode unseen in the engine compartment of a female
college student's car as she drove home for the holidays. Officials at
Pontiac's Michigan Animal Rescue League, the feline's current home, say he
probably survived the 150 mile-trip in the Chevrolet Tracker because the
woman did not stop.



"He was very lucky," Patricia Verduin, the league's board president told The
Daily Oakland Press of Pontiac.


Verduin said when the woman, who declined to give her name to the league,
reached home "she heard this intense kitty-crying."


"She thought she'd run over a cat," Verduin said.


The woman and her family searched around the car. When they finally lifted
the hood, they found a cat sitting on top of the engine.


"He was sitting very still," Verduin said. "It was like he didn't know what
to do."


Tracker, a Russian Blue-angora mixed breed who emerged from his experience
unscathed, may have slipped into the engine compartment to keep warm.


With a house full of pets, the woman turned Tracker over to the Michigan
Animal Rescue League, where he is waiting to be adopted, shelter officials
said.


"He's a very friendly cat," said Kayla Allen, the shelter's manager, who
believes Tracker still is quite young. "He's a healthy eater, loves to play
and interacts well with other animals."


Shelter officials are eager to find him a home as their facilities, like
those around the state, are operating at capacity as a result of an increase
in the number of homeless pets this year.


"It's been a bigger year for kittens and cats particularly," Verduin said as
she pointed to a sign on one of the shelter's walls stating that one cat and
its offspring can produce 420,000 cats in seven years.

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. - For Tracker, the car ride from the Kalamazoo area
to Rochester Hills was long, and could have cost him a life or two. The
long-haired gray cat rode unseen in the engine compartment of a female
college student's car as she drove home

Absolutely amazing.

Sherry