I have to admit that the next story is somewhat personal for me, because it describes almost *exactly* how one of my two cats came into my life.

So please bear with me as I describe this act of kindness for a little kitten who happened to be spotted by the right person at the right time. I love the story, because it shows how several people made the conscious choice to put their Friday night on hold… to save a stray animal.

An employee with a District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania walked out of her work building for the day, when she spotted a stray kitten run past her, onto a busy street.

“When I saw him, I thought to myself, we just have to have a happy ending tonight,” Cathie Abookire later told a reporter.

The kitten ran into (thankfully) stopped traffic, and found what it probably thought was a safe hiding spot… immediately in front of the wheel of a car waiting at a traffic light.

Abookire and another DA employee ran into the street and pounded on the window of the car, urging the driver not to go when the light turned green. As they did this, the kitten ran away to a parked car— and promptly crawled up into the car’s engine.

Not the best hiding spot. 😉

The parked vehicle happened to have a Judicial District parking permit and a phone number, so Abookire called the number. She eventually hooked up with the car’s owner and explained the situation.

The owner, Ray McIver, came to the scene and opened up the hood. And ASPCA workers were eventually able to coax the kitten out of the engine.

All of this happened over the span of three hours. Not the way that most people would want to spend their Friday evening– especially after a long day at work. But the rescuers of Turbo the kitten (named so by her heroes) decided it was time well spent.

“Without all the right people – big hearted people – well, all the right things had to happen,” Abookire later said.

The kitten, by the way, is doing well. 🙂

As I mentioned earlier, this is amazingly similar to how I discovered my cat. She was less than four weeks old when a cameraman at my station discovered her in our station’s parking lot… which was surrounded by three very busy roads, and a highway.

The cameraman spotted her and tried to catch her, but she made her way into his vehicle’s engine. He practically took the engine apart trying to get to her, and brought her inside.

She managed to draw quite a crowd in our news room. She was so tiny her eyes had just barely opened, and she was shivering from fright.

I held her in the palm of my hand (she was that tiny), where she promptly curled up and fell asleep. I was hooked. 😉

She’s now HUGE. And happy. And still around, eleven years later. 🙂