Clearwater Fire Department had a strange and technical rescue this December -- helping a kitten who was stuck deep inside the dashboard of a car.
Kent Watts, the guru of technical rescues for the Clearwater Fire & Rescue Department, has rescued cats from places such as trees, sewers, roofs and the middle of a frozen lake. But never from the small recesses inside the dashboard of a car – until December 2, that is.
That's when Watts was having lunch at a deli on Sunset Point Road when a young woman entered the business trying to get some turkey for a kitten she was hoping to lure from its hiding spot, deep inside her dash.
The owner of the deli offered up the assistance of Chief Watts and he tried to extricate the cat from the dash in the parking lot of the deli. He didn't have the proper tools on hand, so he told Chandlar Lorch to follow him to Station 48.
Piece by piece he began taking the dash apart. The whole extrication process took about two hours, between the time spent in the deli parking lot and the time at the fire station.
"He was as tight and as far away in the corner as you could get," Watts said of the kitten. "And as far away from any opening as you could get. He did not want anything to do with us."
He bit. He scratched. He clawed. He fought. And Chief Watts had the battle scars to prove it.
Lorch had found the kitten that morning near busy Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard just west of U.S. 19 and plucked him from the street before he was run over. She was on her way to an appointment with the veterinarian when he went AWOL.
"I must have called four or five mechanics, and not a single one of them wanted to help," she said. "I didn't know what else to do."
That's when her knight in shining armor – in the shape of a fire department assistant chief – came to her rescue.
"He was so willing to help," she said.
