The purr-plexing love of cats for car engines

Animal News is well aware that cats love to travel - but just why they choose to do it inside bonnets of cars, encased in their engines, is a veritable moggy mystery.

Take Beamer, who suffered horrific burns after spending three days being driven around West Sussex in a BMW. Or misfortunate Mina, who travelled for 30 miles "clinging to the inside of a car bonnet" before being discovered alongside the engine's spark plugs.


Bad luck befell Black Jack, a seven-month old cat who sustained abdominal injuries, a severed Achilles' tendon and a significant loss of muscle tissue after becoming trapped in the fan belt of her neighbour's car. Black Jack required 80 stitches, several operations and eight days in intensive care - but fortunately survived. A fan belt injury also occurred in Rutland, where Lucky

lost much of the skin from the side of his stomach and needed to have a leg amputated after it became trapped in the fan belt.

Halloumi and Mele suffered similar ordeals, as did Maisy - who was discovered when her legs were seen dangling beneath the car. It is said that Maisy

was still deeply traumatised, but was improving.

"Maisy survived a four-mile journey from Abermule to Newtown after becoming trapped in a car engine," she said.

"After the journey her back legs didn't seem to work, but they're back to normal now. She is still deeply traumatised and it's going to be a slow, long journey with lots of tender loving care.

Charlie spent three hours in a car engine journeying from Hull to Norfolk, while in Aberdeen a ginger kitten named Gingi was discovered trapped inside a bonnet after driving for several miles - when the car's owner noticed the engine sounding an unusual purr. Nacho hitched a ride in a car engine all the way from Bristol to Liverpool. But perhaps the most impressive cat-hop was stowaway stray Lucky who, in an act reminiscent of a feline Phileas Fogg, managed to travel all the way from France to England in a car engine, in a journey lasting three days.

But a close second is probably Luna, who survived 300 miles over the course of a week in Austria, trapped inside the bonnet of a Mercedes-Benz - narrowly avoiding a cat-astrophy.

The popularity of engine-dwelling is not limited to cars. Cats have also survived journies trapped inside the engines of a van (in Hampshire), a coach and even a fire service lorry.

It would seem that vehicle engines are simply the purr-fect mode of cat travel! But as this adventurous lifestyle often leaves our feline friends just a whisker from death, it certainly is fortunate that they have nine lives.