Kitten vanishes when driver stops to help. Then she heard meowing in SUV hours later

As Kimberly Esquivel was driving her two young sons to a nearby reptile zoo and museum in California, she spotted something odd.

“I saw this little gray thing army crawling in the street,” Esquivel told McClatchy News.

As she was driving by the tiny critter, she said the car driving beside her nearly hit it Sunday, June 25, on the Buena Park road.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. It’s a cat!” Esquivel said.

So, she stopped in the middle of the street, putting her hazard lights on, to help the kitten out.

There was one problem, though, she said.

“The cat was gone,” Esquivel said.

Esquivel pulled to the side of the road and looked all over for the cat.

After 20 minutes of desperately searching, she said she continued on her way, assuming the kitten had made it to safety.

From there, the family hopped on the 405 Freeway to the reptile zoo and museum in Fountain Valley, she said. Afterwards, the family stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch before heading home, about five hours after the family’s initial kitten encounter.

“We’re at a red light on the way home, and I hear meowing,” she said.

When she pulled over, Esquivel said she did everything she could think of to get the kitten out from under the car, including honking and banging on the underside of the car.

The kitten, however, stayed in place, only occasionally meowing, Esquivel said.

Esquivel called police about the trapped kitten and was directed to animal services.

When they didn’t answer, Esquivel said she decided to drive to her local Buena Park fire station.

“I thought, ‘Well, firefighters get people out of cars and all kinds of crazy situations. So maybe they could help me get a cat out?’” Esquivel said.

Esquivel rang the fire station’s doorbell and explained what happened.

“The firefighters who answered the door were kind of puzzled,” Steve Dohman, a division chief with Orange County Fire Authority, told McClatchy News. “We were thinking, ‘Wait. What do you mean?’”

Dohman said they had Esquivel pull her SUV around the back of the fire station, and they started looking for the kitten, tapping here and there.

“Then, we heard the meow and definitely knew a kitten was stuck in the underside of the SUV,” Dohman said.

The kitten had somehow managed to jump up in the SUV and get stuck between a plastic shroud covering and the gas tank, Dohman said.

Firefighters, including Dohman, got to work, using small tools and wrenches to take apart the plastic shroud until they could see the kitten and pull it out.

The kitten, who had no collar or microchip, was in “really good shape,” Dohman said.

When Esquivel declined to take the kitten home, Dohman said he jokingly asked his administrative assistant, “Hey, do you want to adopt a little kitten?”

To his surprise, he said, his assistant wanted to take him home.

“This cat is an angel kitty, and it was meant to be in the home that he’s in now, because he went all over town and survived,” Esquivel said.

Buena Park is about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

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