Kitten hitches 145-mile ride in car from Sittingbourne, Kent, to Barton arriving unscathed
A KITTEN made the purrfect getaway from its home in Kent, stowing away in the car of a Barton couple who only found it on their return to the village.
The petrified puss, who has been nicknamed Lucky, hitched a 145-mile ride in a car from Sittingbourne to Barton, arriving unscathed.
Roger and Susan Ware discovered the tiny little creature “cowering in bushes” after hearing meowing while checking their garden fences after last week’s gales.
The kitten, said Roger, was “obviously very young, quite fragile and clearly lost”.
He said: “It was so tiny I was surprised it had survived the terrible weather all alone.”
Roger wondered if their neighbours, Jonathan and Melissa Elliott, had perhaps bought a kitten for their young children, so Susan checked with them.
Jonathan said that was not the case – but that he may have a clue to its origin.
He said: “We had been visiting family in Sittingbourne on Saturday and, while there, we stopped to rescue a kitten which was sitting frightened in the middle of a busy road.
“It jumped up onto the wheel arch of our car and I took a picture, just as a memento of a strange situation.
“The animal then disappeared, and we thought it had run off but, just to be sure it wasn’t still somewhere in our car, I called out my brother, who is a motor mechanic living locally down there.
“He looked all around the car, underneath and in the engine compartment. There was no sign of any ‘new passenger’, and we went on our way.
“We went to a football match, stopped there for around three hours, then drove back to Barton, which took about four hours in the most awful conditions, heavy rain, part-flooded roads and strong winds.”
Jonathan said he had then “thought no more about it” until Susan phoned and sent him a photo of the kitten.
He said: “It was clearly the same one. It has distinctive facial markings which matched.
“Somehow it had stowed away, survived that horrendous journey, obviously somewhere in the car – we still don’t know where – and somehow ended up in Susan and Roger’s garden.”
Susan said: “We only called Jonathan on the off chance because we couldn’t think of any other neighbours who might have acquired a kitten.
“Then, after learning of its amazing adventure, we nicknamed it Lucky, and took it to Priory Vets in Christchurch for a check-up and some food, and to see if it was chipped – which it wasn’t.
“If nobody claims it, we would have loved to keep it ourselves because it’s a beautiful little thing and was quite friendly once it knew we would not harm it.
“However, we have two small dogs, and they may not all have got on.”
Messages have now been put out on social media in the Sittingbourne area to see if the owner can be traced.
If no owner comes forward, Priory Vets say they will make sure it is fit and well, then offer it up for a new home locally.