Kitten’s perilous Bay Area journey has a happy ending
Pallet, the stowaway kitten, is with its new owner.
BURLINGAME >> The wayward kitten could've been named Lucky, but Pallet was no doubt just as appropriate.
Nobody knows when the 2-month-old kitten slipped on board a delivery truck making its rounds up and down the Peninsula.
But the tiny white cat got off at just the right place.
It was two weeks ago when staff at the Peninsula Humane Society's animal shelter in Burlingame were unloading their regular shipment of boxes of cat litter, cat food and paper towels from a delivery truck. Then they saw something in the truck's cargo box — something small and light-colored — dart from one hiding spot to another behind the boxes of goods stacked on pallets.
“They're like, ‘Is that a kitten?'” said Buffy MartinTarbox, spokeswoman for the Humane Society and SPCA. It was. Naturally, the shelter employees set out to catch it.
“Our staff had to move everything around and chase this little frightened cat,” Martin-Tarbox said Saturday.
It took nearly 20 minutes before the pursuers succeeded in cornering the kitten. One staffer flung a towel over it and scooped it up.
The driver had arrived at the shelter about 2 p.m. The truck's cargo area contained heavy boxes that could have crushed the baby cat if they had shifted or fell, Martin-Tarbox said.
“He's a very lucky little kitten,” she said. “The driver had no idea he had a stowaway kitten.”
Shelter employees don't know whether the animal snuck aboard the truck when it was loaded, or at some point along the driver's route. But because the kitten wasn't dehydrated, they believe it got in the truck the same day it was found.
“Except for being scared and dirty he didn't have any medical issues from his journey,” Martin-Tarbox said. “He'd hiss a little, but when you picked him up he would immediately melt in your arms and just purr. He's just a little love.”
Because the kitten was found behind pallets, the shelter staff named it Pallet. It had no implanted microchip identification or ear tattoo.
“We don't know if he was a homeless kitten, maybe born to a feral litter,” Martin-Tarbox said.
During the mandatory waiting period before Pallet could be adopted, no owner came forward to claim him, she said.
So the kitten went up for adoption Thursday after being neutered and microchipped. And he found a home Friday afternoon with a South San Francisco woman who also adopted another kitten, named Buttons, from the shelter.
The shelter didn't release the name of the woman, but it did provide a photo of her lovingly holding Pallet.
“Pallet will have a sibling,” Martin-Tarbox said. “It was almost like fate that the kitten ended up in a shelter that was going to be able to care for him and adopt him out to a new home.”