A fearless feline who survived a 15-mile trip while trapped inside a car’s engine is recovering after the grueling ride.
Leanne Munro says her pet Pebbles was nearly killed when he somehow got stuck inside the engine compartment of her car earlier this month and wound up miles away from their home in Rio Linda, Calif.
“He’s had a couple surgeries on his jaw and they’ve had to remove the tail here at the end,” Munro told KTXL, a local Fox affiliate.
An anonymous passerby spotted Pebbles hiding by a shed in nearby Carmichael, and took the cat, who had a broken jaw and was covered in bruises and cuts, to a veterinarian.
The vet used Pebbles’ microchip to track down Munro.
“He wasn’t looking very good,” Munro told the station, adding that she worried her beloved pet was dying.
While the treatments were covered under Munro’s pet insurance, Pebbles needed extensive care to survive.
“It was a big decision with both the vet and myself as to whether we were going to make him suffer, so it was a day-by-day thing and we just knew that he was a fighter,” Munro said.
Pebbles’ jaw was wired, his cuts sutured and most of his tail amputated. Doctors expect it was caught in a fan belt or burned during the ride in the engine.
“When we brought him home, the poor guy couldn’t walk because his balance was wrong,” Munro told the Sacramento Bee. “But pretty soon he was OK.”
Pebbles’ wild ride caught the attention of Veterinarian Pet Insurance, which selects a different case each month to be in the running for the Hambone Award, given to pets who overcome bizarre accidents.
The award was named after a dog who survived being trapped in a refrigerator by eating an entire Thanksgiving ham, later escaping with only a mild case of hypothermia, according to the Sacramento Bee.
