Video: Cat Pulled from Engine Block in West Chester

It started with a sound.

Meow.

Carol Intintoli had just left her office at the with her daughter and a group of coworkers.  The group had plans for the evening as they headed up Market Street. 

Dinner.  Drinks.  Fun.

Meow.

“It registered almost as a baby to me,” said Kristin Hess, one of Intintoli’s coworkers.

 “I didn’t register that the cat would be in distress,” said another of Intintoli’s coworkers, Abby Boyer.  “I just thought, ‘Oh, a cat.’”

“I looked inside the car thinking it would be in there,” Intintoli said in front of where the car was parked.  “Finally, we looked under the car, and we saw the tail.”

Meow.

The cat’s tail hung down from the engine block.  It was the only part of the cat that was visible.

“It had a very bushy tail like a coon cat tail,” Intintoli said.

Hess added, “Carol was bending down in the parking area, so I stood guard.”

“I think you just yelled at Carol.  Like, ‘Carol, Carol, there are cars,’” Boyer said.

The women found themselves in a predicament. 

“We started thinking to ourselves, ‘what are we going to do?’” Hess said.

Hess added, “We had all these random strangers walk by and stop because they thought something was seriously wrong, but when they found out they would just walk away.”

“One guy said, ‘I don’t do cats.’” Intintoli said.

So, they decided to delay their plans a little longer and call for help.

First, they called the police, but the police said they couldn’t help. Then they called the SPCA, but they couldn’t help either.  The SPCA couldn’t do anything to the car because the owner wasn’t present.

“I checked the parking meter, and I felt like a detective,” Boyer said.  “The owner had 15 minutes left so we were waiting around.”

When the 15 minutes expired the owner didn’t show, and the women were growing impatient.

They wrote a note.

“I think it said something like, ‘There’s a cat in your car.  We saw him from underneath.  Here’s the number for the SPCA,’” Boyer said. 

She added, “Can you imagine if you got that message.  I would be like, ‘What does that mean?’”

Another couple of minutes had passed and still no owner, and the cat had stopped meowing.

That’s when Lieutenant John Freas happened to be driving by on his way home from work. 

“Carol flagged him down,” Boyer said.  “She used to be a New Yorker so she’s got the hand.”

Lt. Freas got out of his car, and Intintoli explained the situation.

“It was to the point that cats can put themselves in odd places just because they’re cats.  The cop coming to our rescue really comforted me,” Intintoli said.

From there, things moved quickly.

Lt. Freas ran the car’s plates, and called the owner’s home.  The owner was out to dinner in town.

“He came racing around the corner,” Intintoli said.  “I thought, ‘that’s got to be the owner.’ He looked very anxious.”

The owner of the car popped the hood, and tucked away in the engine block was the cat.

“We were trying to give the cat water through a straw,” Intintoli said.  “The cat was panting, which is never a good thing.  At one point he stopped panting and was just shivering.”

After several attempts to pull the cat out from the top, Lt. Freas called a tow truck to see if they could get the cat out from the bottom.

During this time, the car owner (who did not want to be identified) said that he did not own a cat, and he had not heard the cat meow that morning when he left for work.

At that point, the most common theory for how the cat got in the engine was that he was seeking shelter during the wicked thunderstorm that whipped through the area early Thursday morning.

However, the owner lived in Chester Springs, and many did not believe the cat would have survived the 20-25 minute commute.  The owner believed that the cat might have crawled in there while the owner was at work on Airport Road. 

The tow truck from West End Towing arrived on the scene and lifted the car.

Carol Intintoli was the first one underneath the car.

“We had gloves on because we were worried if the cat was sick or injured he would claw us,” Intintoli said.  “But the cat was so far gone that it wasn’t antagonistic in any way.”

Still, the cat would not come out.

“I was under the wheel-well with my left hand trying to push the head towards the opening I figured he crawled in,” Intintoli said.

She added, “It was confusing because we couldn’t communicate with the people above.  So they would try to pull the cat up while we were trying to pull in the other direction.  Honestly, I don’t think the cat was budging either way.”

After a couple of attempts to get the cat free, the tow-truck driver began to dismantle the air filter to see if he could get the cat out that way.

“I kept touching the cat to see if he had a pulse.  He was on his way out,” Intintoli said.  “When they started dismantling everything, I was just praying that they got everything done in time.”

The tow-truck driver pulled off the air filter, and Lt. Freas reached into the engine.

He came up with a cat in his hand, streaked with grease and yellow eyes filled with fear.

Lt. Freas gave the cat to the woman from the SPCA who had arrived, and the van sped off towards the emergency vets office.

Intintoli, also streaked with grease got up and out from underneath the car.

“I didn’t even get to see him,” Intintoli said.  “I look like a chimney sweep.”