Florida woman allows car to be destroyed with chainsaw to rescue kitten

VERO BEACH, Fla., Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A Florida woman whose newly-adopted kitten vanished into the dashboard of her car ended up allowing mechanics to destroy the vehicle with a chainsaw.

Denise Wilford-Neal of Vero Beach said she was driving the kitten home after adopting it Monday when it crawled up into the dash console of her 1995 Monte Carlo and refused to come back out.

"We could feel him, but we couldn't reach him," she told WBPF-TV.

Wilford-Neal said she tried coaxing the kitten out of the dash with food and water, but she turned to Facebook for help after 20 hours passed and the feline still hadn't emerged.

"I was worried about the heat of the day," Wilford-Neal told WPEC-TV, "So, I put a post on Facebook, 'Does anyone have suggestions,' and then it went crazy. People were calling and coming by with tools and mechanics came."

The mechanics tried taking the dash apart, but found they still couldn't reach the cat. They offered Wilford-Neal a choice.

"They disassembled my dash piece by piece, looking and still looking, taking pieces apart," Wilford-Neal said, "But they said there was one way to get to Monte. They could use a saw to cut out the dash, but it would destroy my Monte Carlo."

Wilford-Neal said she decided to sacrifice her $800 car to rescue the cat, because it's "just a baby."

Wilford-Neal said the kitten, now named Monte in honor of its temporary home, it doing well after being freed, but her Monte Carlo is completely destroyed.