Kitten rescued by a whisker
Published: July 4, 2006
Zoey the cat finished off at least one of her nine lives last week when she landed on a busy highway after apparently being tossed from a truck.
The little black kitten was frantically trying to escape the Highway 8 traffic through a hole in the noise barriers when help arrived.
Annabelle Ternent, a teacher at Clemens Mill Public School in Cambridge, was driving home from work last Wednesday when she saw a distressed-looking young woman by a car pulled over on Highway 8.
“I saw something black, sort of fluttering at the side of the road,” the Kitchener resident said. “I did a double take and saw that it was a kitten flailing.”
The young woman had just witnessed someone fling the kitten from their pickup truck, Ternent said. She pulled over in horror just before the busy turnoff onto Highway 86.
After the two women rescued the cat from the roadside, Ternent took it to her veterinarian.
“The pads on her feet were scraped and bloody, and her face looked as if she’d been punched,” Ternent said.
The seven-week-old kitten suffered no broken bones — just a bit of bruising, some scrapes, and a swollen right eye.
Another teacher at Ternent’s school suggested she name the cat Zoey, after a student who nearly died as a baby.
And after nearly a week of proper food and care, Zoey is behaving like any other kitten.
“She’s purring and running around, and she’s a very happy little girl,” Ternent said. “She’s a fighter.”
The young woman who first spotted Zoey is still a mystery.
“I didn’t get her name, and I wish I had,” Ternent said. “It was so wonderful of her to do that, such a Good Samaritan.”
Unable to identify Zoey’s former owners or the truck, Ternent said she just hopes to get the word out that harming animals is unacceptable.
Reports of drive-by abandonments don’t occur often, said Ward McAlister, general manager of the Kitchener-Waterloo Humane Society.
He attributed the low number to education and enforcement campaigns.
“We’re starting to see the numbers of animals hit by cars, (and) abandonments decreasing,” he said.
“But one is too many.”
With three cats at home already, Ternent said she regrets she can’t keep a fourth feline.
But she plans to continue caring for Zoey until she finds the right person to adopt her.
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