A smelly engine could mean anything, but, when your car starts meowing, you know you’ve got problems.
A Bedford-Stuyvesant family had to make an unexpected stop in East New York Tuesday morning, after they realized that a strange smell filling their Ford Explorer was the singed hair of an unfortunate cat that had gotten stuck atop their car’s piping-hot muffler.
“He wasn’t happy at all,” said Quann Johnson, of his sport-utility vehicle’s unexpected passenger. “He was hurting.”
Johnson was traveling to visit his mother-in-law in East New York with his wife Tiffany, his niece, her husband and their two children, when he caught a whiff of something burning, he said.
“We just smelled something,” he said. “But I assumed it was my thermostat leaking, so I didn’t think nothing of it — until we parked the car.”
The happy family stopped at Hegemon Avenue between Fountain Avenue and Logan Street at around 10 am to grab some snacks and, when they returned, the Johnsons heard the terrible cry of a cat in distress. It wasn’t too long before they spotted a scrappy-looking tail sticking out of from the bottom of their car.
“He was making noise, basically yelling for help,” said Johnson. “At that point, he sounded strong, but my understanding of how hot a muffler can get, we knew it had to be bad.”
The feline had likely crawled up next to the still-warm engine block of Johnson’s Explorer Monday night as the temperatures plummeted, looking for a warm place to sleep.
“I guess he was trying to get warm,” said Johnson.
The family called 911 and two police officers rushed to the scene. Officer Robert Zajac signed up for prying the poor kitty loose from the scorching hot undercarriage of the Johnsons’ Ford.
The determined cops spent a half-hour under the car, while a worried Tiffany waited with bated breath and the cat seemed to be slipping towards feline heaven.
“At one point it sounded like he wasn’t crying anymore, like he’d just given up,” she said. “I kept asking the officers, ‘Is he still alive, is he still alive?’ ’’
Finally, with a firm grip on his tail, Officer Zajac was able to wrench hapless feline from under the Johnsons’ car — scraggly, sick, singed, and possibly injured — but still very-much alive.
Cops handed the cat over to the Animal Care and Control Center on Linden Boulevard, where he’s receiving treatment through the Special Treatment and Recovery Fund.
A spokeswoman for the center could not elaborate on the cat’s condition, but said her co-workers had come up with a nickname for the out-of-the-box cat.
“We’ve been calling him Houdini,” she said.
If the feline recovers, he will be eligible for adoption through Animal Care and Control. That is music to the ears of. Johnson, who expressed interest in adding the little fellow to her family.
“I’m going to keep checking on him and, hopefully, I’d like to adopt him,” she said.