The woman drove close to five miles and didn’t notice anything unusual, but as she got out of her car near an Ashland McDonalds, she heard an unmistakable meowing. A cat had somehow wedged itself into the car’s inner workings, inches from the engine, and come along for the ride.
The animal would not come out, so the driver quickly called the local police, who summoned fire and animal control officials.
Dona Walsh, animal control officer for Ashland and Holliston, said it was difficult to see the cat when she arrived Wednesday morning — even with the vehicle’s hood up.
“When I looked inside the engine, there was just a little tiny space where you could see the cat on the front axle,” she said. “It was very, very stressed at that point. It was breathing heavily like it was in some sort of shock.”
Ashland Fire Department Lieutenant David Iarussi, disconnected some components of the engine, allowing Walsh to reach it. Walsh, who brought her husband, Mark Walsh, along for the “technical rescue,” was able to grab the cat by the scruff of its neck to pull it out.
“It never made any noises like we were hurting it,” she said. “It just went limp and just let us work it so it could get out.”
The cat is now at an Ashland kennel, where it is — surprisingly — unharmed. Officials are looking for the animal’s owner.
Walsh did not have the name of the driver, who may have accidentally picked the animal up at an apartment complex along 2nd Street in Framingham. The cat is white with spots of gray-striped fur.
In her years as animal control officer, Walsh has seen cats get into some unlikely spots. Another time, she pulled a cat from a clothes dryer that had been unwittingly switched on inside. That animal also survived.
“There’s some pretty strange stuff that they do,” Walsh said.
Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @andyrosen.