Kitten rescued from car engine, becomes Internet celebrity

Meet Mercedes the kitten.

She became the latest feline Internet celebrity after her new owner, Antonio Rosario of Brooklyn, rescued her from the engine of a car.

Rosario posted his story on a blog he created to tell her story, and it's quickly gone viral.

"We're driving along Ocean Parkway, headed to Brighton Beach for a morning at the beach. Sometime while we're driving (I'm in the passenger seat) I hear what sounds like a cat crying… I think that we have a cat in our car. I look out behind me and out the window and in the adjacent lane is see a Mercedes S550 with its left front turn signal light missing from the housing. In this housing is the little face of a kitten crying."

He signals the woman driving the car, and they pull over, but she has no idea how to open the hood of the car.

"I can see the kitten sitting inside the housing where the turn signal lamp should be. She's staring at me and I reach in to grab her and she disappears further into the engine."

While they try to figure out how to pop the car's hood, Rosario tries to reach the kitten.

"Suddenly, I see a paw protruding from the right front part of the car, near the turn signal housing. It's limp. [My wife] Elizabeth and I fear the kitten is dead because the engine was so hot. I push at the paw and shove it back inside the housing. The kitten could not come out that way anyway. I could feel it and I poked it a bit and it started crying again."

The woman says she wants to drive to a mechanic to get the kitten out, but Rosario, along with the crowd that had gathered, convinced her that might kill the kitten.

"We finally got the hood open and I could finally see the kitten had moved a bit more towards the center of the car, between the radiator and the fan. She was looking up at us. I tried to reach my arm down, but there was not enough room and I kept burning myself on the radiator cap. Another guy started tapping underneath the car in order to scare her back towards the open housing on the left side of the car. That's when she decided to take a left turn and head further into the engine block, out of our sight. CRAP!"

They then try to woo the kitten with some meat the driver had from the market.

"I could see the kitten and she became interested in the meat. She first poked her head out of the hole. I told everyone to be quiet so we wouldn't scare her back into the engine. Finally she dropped one leg down then another. Finally, she dropped out of the hole and I grabbed her firmly and quick. Gotchya!"

Rosario and his wife Elizabeth decided to keep the kitten, naming her Mercedes--Mercy for short.