This is the face of a miracle, an almost unbelievable survival story. This cat survived a 4.5 hour car journey! Source: North Taranaki SPCA
Phillip the miracle cat has been re-united with his owner after his hair-raising ride to New Plymouth stuck between the radiator and the grille of a car.
"He's absolutely fine. You would never know anything had happened by looking at him," said Laura Pendergrast, of Ngaruawahia.
"He slept on mylap most of the car ride home," Pendergrast said this evening, shortly after arriving home with husband Douglas after retrieving the cat from Taranaki, a three-hour journey each way.
Laura Pendergrast reunited with her family's cat Phillip, after he accidentally got drawn up into the grille space of a stranger's car and travelled from Waikato to New Plymouth.
His only apparent problem is that he is missing a few claws.
It had been thought Phillip got stuck at Orewa in the Chevrolet Camaro which made a 4.5-hour non-stop trip from Auckland to New Plymouth.
"From the sounds of things," Pendergrast said, "when the guy was telling his story, the owner of the car, he said he drove all the way from Auckland to new Plymouth with no stops.
"He did say he passed through Ngaruawahia. As he turned onto our street, he said, he was going quite slow because he was taking the bend.
"He said he saw what looked like an animal on the side of the road. He didn't feel a thud. They dismissed it because there's no way that would happen going 30km an hour, how a cat survived getting drawn up into the car, but he obviously was ..."
Pendergrast, the mother of four children aged from 4 months to 6 years, said she had noticed 3-year-old Phillip's absence but wasn't worried because the family's other cat had gone missing, then returned.
She only learned where Phillip was when looking at an SPCA page on Facebook last night. She couldn't at first understand why she was seeing a picture of her cat.
But she became frantic when she understood what had happened to him, until she managed to make contact with the person caring for Phillip.
Before Pendergrast had made contact, Phillip's carers had said publicly he had recovered remarkably.
The white and grey long-haired cat made the journey to New Plymouth on Thursday.
The Chevrolet's driver, an Auckland man, was unaware the cat was in the grille space.
The cat, first thought to be severely injured, wasn't discovered until the car was parked outside a New Plymouth hotel where passers-by alerted the SPCA and rushed the animal to a vet.
Cat survived an horrific trip in a car grill from Auckland to New Plymouth has survived against all odds. Image / supplied SPCA
North Taranaki SPCA said the brave cat is "the face of a miracle and unbelievable survival story" after he lost his claws, was hypothermic and suffered severe shock.
But yesterday they said the cat had recovered "remarkably" and was in good health, but no one had come forward to claim it.
"We hope that somebody will know the cat, whether it be a neighbour, friend or relative," they said.
