Repair Shop Gives Vehicle `Felinement'

by Gloria Campisi, Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: June 11, 1998

At first, they thought maybe it was a catbird.

But a search of the trees around the Oak Grove trailer park in Hatfield, Montgomery County, didn't turn up a feathered source of the mysterious meows.

As they drove around town, Wilmer and Edith Kramer began putting two and two together.

It sounded like a kitten.

Somewhere inside their Chevy Suburban.

They searched the entire vehicle and even crawled underneath, but couldn't find a stowaway.

``So we put tuna fish out underneath the car one evening and figured if the cat was underneath there, it may come out to eat,'' said Edith Kramer. ``The tuna fish was gone the next day, but the cat was not.''

It had been three days. Worried, the Kramers took the vehicle to Bergey's Tire and Service Center, in Lansdale.

``They had to pull the gas tank down and another man stood on a step ladder and reached in there with gloves on to pull the kitten out,'' Edith Kramer said. The scared kitty, who came out howling and scratching, had been wedged between the gas tank and the car frame.

It cost $24. The kitten, a little gray female with blue eyes, about 6 weeks old, was fine.

``Bergey's said a couple weeks before that they had taken one out of a fanbelt that was mangled,'' said Edith Kramer.

The Kramers gave the kitten to their landlord, Hatfield Township Commissioner Bill Forst, who has a barn where his daughters keep horses.

He said his family named the kitten Ashes for its dark gray coat and because it was ``all full of soot and dirt from being up in there for three days.''

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