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Community Corner

Black Cat Lucky On Friday The 13th

A woman hears a cat inside of her car as she's driving on Main Avenue.

A woman was driving down Main Avenue last Friday when she heard noises come from the inside of her Jeep Grand Cherokee. She turned down the radio and sounds of a cat crying, grew louder and louder. Baffled, the woman pulled into the driveway with the big sign that read   figuring it had something to do with animals. She raced inside to let the employees of the shelter know about the situation.

"This woman was frantic," said , director of PAWS. "She had just left McDonald's and she thinks she's hearing a cat in the car, but she doesn't have a cat. We went outside to the car and heard the cat in the tire well by the axle and the rear tires."

The cat, which is midnight black, apparently squeezed through a small hole near the back right tire and was balancing itself on a small strip of metal that was protecting the wheel. Trouble was, the workers could not remove anything on the vehicle to get to the cat.

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"I called the tow service to see if they could help us dismantle the Jeep," said Rinaldi. "But they didn't want anything to do with it because of liability. I told them it was a cat, not a mountain lion."

With the high-winds and below freezing temperatures, the workers had to deal with the elements while trying to figure out how to extract the cat from the Jeep.

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"The woman was afraid we were going to tear apart the car," said Gilda Caserta, feline adoption intake coordinator. "We pulled out the spare tire and thought it was going to be there, but it was under the wheel well and kind of wedged into one side. We were on our backs under the car trying to entice the cat with some food and he made his head kind of visible, but we still couldn't get to it."

After an hour of trying to free the cat from the Jeep, Caserta called another employee, Matt Berg, who was nursing a horrific cold, to see if he could help with the situation.

"I told him to try to get in his hand in that same area and grab the cat," said Caserta. If they were lucky enough to make that happen, they still had to worry about the cat hitting the ground and taking off.

"Matt nudged the cat out. We had the carriers on the ground, and as soon as the cat was out of the car, it ran right into the carrier," said Caserta.

The cat, which they believe is 6-9 months old, has a new name. It has been dubbed, Ronald. The employees at PAWS believe the cat nestled its way into the Jeep when the woman was at , so they named it after Ronald McDonald.

Ronald is sleek and very playful. It's resting comfortably at PAWS and is available for adoption. If interested, you can them at (203) 750-9572 and make an appointment to see Ronald. He may have used up one of his lives, but in cat lore, Ronald still has eight more.

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