It took three hours to rescue this black kitten from inside a car in the parking lot of Lowe’s Home Improvement store in West Boca. The store’s manager adopted the kitten and named her Mazda. (Lowe’s West Boca/Courtesy)
What began as a simple trip to the gardening section of Lowe’s turned into a tedious kitten rescue mission.
It all started on Sunday morning at the home improvement store near the intersection of State Road 7 and West Palmetto Park Road. While in the store’s parking lot, Boca resident Paul Pontrelli, now 70, heard a kitten’s meows coming from somewhere inside his red Mazda SUV.
Witnesses say a man named John Russo spent three hours Sunday May 1, 2016, working to rescue a kitten that had been trapped inside a car. He ultimately freed the small animal from between the car’s front bumper and a headlight. (June Pontrelli/Courtesy)
He popped the hood and began searching for the wee one. Thinking it was car trouble, a man, identified by witnesses as John Russo, decided to help Pontrelli.
For three long hours, Russo took apart Pontrelli’s car “from front to back” just to find the trapped kitten, Pontrelli’s wife, June, stated. Three Lowe’s employees also helped with the rescue.
“Nobody was leaving until we could get this little kitten out of the car,” Pontrelli went on to say.
The task was not an easy one at all, she said. The men even used water to try to coax the frightened feline out.
“It kept moving all over the bottom of the car,” she recalled.
Ultimately, Russo freed the kitten who was between the front bumper and a headlight. He put the car back together again piece by piece.
“We were all slapping hands and hugging each other,” Pontrelli concluded. “We were ecstatic.”
Pontrelli estimates the black kitten to be about six weeks old. The store’s manager adopted the kitten and named her Mazda. She’s reportedly doing just fine now.
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