Last Updated on May 23, 2026 by admin
The Honda Civic had been parked at the QT on Indian School Road in Phoenix since the night before. The driver — a woman in her thirties, on her way to a 7 a.m. shift at St. Joseph’s — turned the key, heard the engine turn over normally, and then heard, instead of normal engine sounds, an extremely loud and extremely upset meow.
She killed the engine.
She got out.
She got back in and turned the key again, very softly, just enough to check.
The meow happened a second time.
She called the Phoenix Fire Department non-emergency line. Captain Lupita Reyes of Station 14 took the call personally because, Reyes said later, “I am the cat lady on this shift and they know it.”
Reyes arrived in eleven minutes. She had a flashlight, a pair of leather gloves, a small plastic crate, and a half-empty can of tuna she had been keeping in the truck for a week.
The kitten — orange, six weeks old, somewhere between three and four ounces of greasy fur — was wedged in the engine bay, curled around the fan belt assembly, with one paw braced against the alternator.
It took thirty-one minutes to extract him.
The driver of the Civic, who had cried twice during the extraction, said she did not feel right just leaving with her car.
Reyes said, very gently, that the cat appeared to have made his own arrangements.
Sparkplug — Reyes named him in the truck, on the drive back to Station 14 — has now lived in the captain’s office at Station 14 for eight months. He weighs nine pounds. He sleeps on the chief’s spare jacket, which is on a hook behind the office door.
He has not, to the best of anybody’s knowledge, gone back near a Honda Civic.