BACK BAY — Kim O’Connor, who owns Blackwater Custom Apparel, sold merchandise at the annual 4-H show and sale on Friday, June 2, in rural Virginia Beach.
Her trailer, filled with tees and hats and such, was located just outside the arena at the Creeds Ruritan Community Complex.
And her Toyota Prius was parked near the trailer.
Some young people chased what appears to have been a feral kitten, which, of all possible escape routes, made for O’Connor’s hybrid automobile.
“She climbed up in my engine,” O’Connor said.
Folks tried to get the kitten out, but it did not cooperate.
“She did not want to come out,” O’Connor said.
The animal went deeper into the engine.
Too deep to retrieve.
So O’Connor called over to Back Bay Auto Repair, a garage that, by country standards, was pretty much across the street. But O’Connor needed to drive the Prius there.
It seems like a pretty long way with a kitten in your engine.
“I drove really slow over to Back Bay Auto,” she said, “and they put it up on the lift.”
She drove slowly so the hybrid ran on its battery power, not the engine. Auto shop manager Patti Newton saw the Prius coming with its lights flashing.
“She could have walked faster,” Newton said.
Mechanic Jean “Sooch” Soutiere was ready to put the car on a lift.
“He’s got a big heart for animals,” Newton said, speaking of her colleague at the shop.
They got the Prius on the lift.
“Luckily, the little guy, he got stuck in the belly pan,” Soutiere said, explaining that they removed a panel on the bottom of the Prius to rescue the kitten.
It was scared, but just fine.
Soutiere even decided to adopt the kitten who, on the afternoon of its rescue, was already being cared for at home by his daughter, 17-year-old Anna, and had a vet appointment lined up.
And the kitten also has a new name, which references both its rescue from inside the Prius and a movie character from a galaxy far, far away.
“Yoda,” Soutiere said. “After the Toyota.”
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