This is one purr-fect police story.
A Midtown cop who rescued a tiny kitten from beneath a food truck earlier this month told amNewYork that he struck up a remarkable bond with the feline, leading him to adopt it.
Police Officer Frank Squillante of the Midtown North Precinct spoke to amNewYork about how the stray left paw prints on his heart on Oct. 9.
Just after 8 p.m. that evening, Squillante said that he received several 911 calls reporting that an animal had been struck by a vehicle on East 58th Street and Madison Avenue. When he got there, he found pedestrians gathered around a food truck.
“There was a group of 20 people surrounding a food truck, a big food truck, and we go up to the crowd and they say, there’s a cat stuck underneath the vehicle,” Squillante recalled. “I’m laying underneath the truck, we don’t see anything. We’re asking if anybody here owns the cat. And then we heard the cat meow.”
Squillante remembers frantically attempting to find the tiny stray when something remarkable happened.
“I put my hand into the wheel well, and I feel the cat lick my hand. And then that’s when I grab him and I pull him out. And he was all shaken up,” Squillante said. “I thought he was going to get away when I grabbed him, but he calmed down.”
Squillante carried the bundle of fluff in his arms back to the precinct. he said he instantly fell in love with it.
He believes the kitten had crawled into the truck in an attempt to stay warm, but he knows the worst could have happened if he had not received a 911 call.
“It’s like I saved his life, because if we had never gone there, if nobody ever called, who knows what would have happened with this cat? When the food truck closed down, they could have driven away. The cat could have been stuck under there, God forbid, got run over,” Squillante said.
Squillante feels that the friendship was meant to be, adding that he whisked his new four-legged friend to the vet and ensured he received treatment and his inoculations. When it came to giving the kitten, now named Cheech, a home, it wasn’t his choice.
“Everyone was pretty much telling me that the cat finds you, you don’t find the cat,” Squillante said. “It was a sign that we are meant to be connected together.”
Cheech is now five weeks old, and Squillante says he is a proud first-time cat owner himself.
“The cat community was very welcoming. I’ve done nothing but get gifts and help and advice, and it’s really an amazing community with everybody.”
