A Georgia college student discovered a stowaway kitten dangling from her car bumper after an 800-mile drive from New Jersey.
Jadyn Sawyer, a University of Georgia student, had no idea the animal was riding inside her vehicle’s undercarriage when she left Mount Laurel, New Jersey, on August 10 and headed south. The cat’s paw was the first thing she noticed upon arriving in Athens, Georgia, prompting her to contact university police for help.
University officers turned to a familiar partner for the unusual extraction. Kelly Bettinger, founder of Cat Zip Alliance-Campus Cats, said her kitten rescue organization gets called by campus police a handful of times each year for cats trapped in vehicles. This rescue, however, demanded far more than the typical reach-under-the-seat operation.
Bettinger explained that freeing Jersey required mechanics to dismantle portions of Sawyer’s car and pull the kitten from deep within the undercarriage. The 10-week-old cat emerged in remarkably good shape for an animal that had just completed a interstate journey wedged in automotive machinery.
Veterinarians who examined Jersey found only a cold to show for his ordeal, with no serious injuries from the long ride. The rescue group announced his happy ending in a September 6 Facebook post, revealing that an Athens local named Micki Wisenbaker had adopted the traveler.
“We are thrilled to have Jersey Boy, now called Jack, as part of our family,” Wisenbaker told NJ.com. “My husband and I had recently rescued another kitten, Maggie, and she was craving company … they are now best friends.”
The renamed cat’s interstate journey began in the Garden State, where he somehow climbed or fell into Sawyer’s bumper before she departed for the fall semester. Mount Laurel, his point of origin, sits roughly 15 miles east of Philadelphia — putting the kitten nearly 800 miles from his eventual new home when the trip started.
Bettinger noted that while campus police calls for kitten extractions are not rare, the scale of this operation stood apart from routine rescues. The mechanical disassembly added both time and complexity to what might otherwise have been a quick retrieval.
The rescue group has not indicated whether Jack has shown any lingering preference for tight spaces or automotive travel since settling into his new household.