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Kick Buttowski is safely back home following a harrowing 12 mile ride huddled in a van’s roof racks on a highway at 70mph.
Electrician Helen Stevens was traveling in her work van from Melton, Leicestershire UK on Friday and was signaled by a fellow motorist when she got on the M69 roadway. She pulled over and was startled to see a frightened looking black and white tuxedo cat clinging to a ladder attached to her roof racks.
“I was gobsmacked,” she said. “The cat was on the roof rack which had some stepladders on it, and was just clinging on for dear life. He was wide-eyed and looking terrified,” Stevens said in a story in the Leicester Mercury today, continuing, “It had to have got on at the petrol station we stopped at in Melton and we’d already gone all the way down the A46 and the M1 and were probably doing up to 70mph.”
Ms. Stevens took the cat to the Bell, Brown and Bentley veterinary clinic in Stoneygate, Leicester, where he was found to be unhurt but very shaken by the experience.
Bell, Brown and Bentley vets posted the cat’s photo and wrote at Facebook on Friday:
“This poor cat travelled on top of a van today from Melton, all the way down the 46, M1 for a bit then down the M69. If anyone knows who his owner is please can you get in touch, he is staying at our London Road branch. He was ok apart from his heart racing ten to the dozen.”
The vets’ post at Facebook was shared over 500 times, and that same day Ellise Pepper spotted her cat’s photo online and communicated with the vets about making positive identification through photos.
Kick was not microchipped, so the social networking of his photo at Facebook was crucial in helping his family find him so far from home. Ellise saw Kick’s photo because one of her Facebook friends had shared it from the vets’ page. The petmom was already concerned about the cat’s whereabouts since he hadn’t shown for his dinner, and was relieved to learn he’d been safely found.
The family reclaimed their adventurous pet on Saturday. Young Connor is quoted in the paper saying, “He held on and he didn’t fall off, but I bet he was scared.”
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