BETTER!
KITTEN SURVIVES DAYS TRAPPED IN HOT CAR AT JFK
A kitten locked in a steaming hot car at Kennedy Airport was flying high when cops rescued her Tuesday.
The freaked-out furball was saved by Port Authority police, who said it appeared the animal had been without food and water for at least three days.
The kitten was trapped inside an SUV in a JFK parking lot in Queens, officials said.
Despite the long stay, the frisky feline hid under the seat of the white Toyota SUV when the Port Authority Police Emergency Service Unit popped a lock to free her.
Officials believe the kitty had been inside the vehicle since Saturday, when a Delta Airlines employee parked his SUV near building 67 — used by Delta Airlines to store cargo on the northern end of the airport away from the terminals — to go on a trip.
Over the weekend, people walking through the parking lot spotted the cat sitting on the SUV’s dashboard and walking back and forth on the vehicle’s seats.
“The kitten was there for at least three days,” a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case said.
People got so concerned that someone wrote a note to the Delta employee, who works for the airline’s maintenance division, threatening to alert authorities if the kitten wasn’t freed soon.
“Your cat is in your car since Saturday,” the witness wrote on the note, which was affixed to the vehicle’s window with tape used to seal checked bags. “I will call the police tomorrow if your car is still here and tell them that a cat is in this car.”
The Port Authority police were ultimately alerted about 8:45 a.m. Tuesday and responded right away.
Getting into the locked Toyota was easy for the cops.
Getting their paws on the scared creature was trickier, a source said.
“Once they accessed the car, they couldn’t find the cat,” the source said. “It was hiding under one of the back seats under one of the frames.”
Port Authority police finally managed to find and grab the cat and take it to an Animal Care Centers of NYC facility in Queens, where bighearted workers named her Miss Delta.
Despite the three-day stretch without food or water, the kitten was in good health, officials said. Port Authority cops gave the her food and water before handing her off to Animal Care Centers of NYC.
“She’s decompressing,” a staffer at the Queens facility said Tuesday.
Cops are currently looking to question the owner of the vehicle, who is out of the country.
Speaking through his supervisor, the maintenance worker said that he had found the kitten as a stray and had decided to take the animal to a shelter.
But when he arrived at the shelter, he couldn’t find the kitten, and believed she had raced out of the SUV when he opened the door.
He then went to JFK and parked the car and went on his trip to Thailand, never knowing that Miss Delta was still hiding inside his vehicle.
“That’s his story, but he’s going to have to back it up,” the source said, adding that the PAPD has launched an animal cruelty investigation against the car’s owner.
The animal abuse probe has to be completed before Miss Delta can be put up for adoption, officials said. The kitten will be given a thorough exam — which is routine in animal cruelty cases — before an Animal Care Centers of NYC staffer can take her home, officials said.
Delta Airlines said it was also investigating the incident.
Tuesday’s rescue was similar to what a cat named Pepper went through back in April. Pepper escaped her owner and wandered around JFK Airport’s International terminal for a week before Port Authority police could apprehend her.
A friend of the owner had to be brought in to call out to Pepper — who is also a tabby cat, although a little older than Miss Delta — before she poked her head out from the ductwork near the ceiling.
The friend’s secret weapon was knowing Pepper’s Mandarin name, Dai Meng, which loosely translated means “little dork,” she said at the time.