Kitten Survives 250 Mile Journey Trapped in BMW Undercarriage. Now She’s Up for Adoption

An intrepid kitten is awaiting her forever family after being rescued from inside a car’s undercarriage.

Jeff Rothstein and his wife Lauri had just finished the 250-mile journey from Boston to South Orange, New Jersey, in their new BMW on Monday, May 12, when Jeff went to plug in the electric vehicle and heard a small “meow,” he told the New York Post. He then realized that there was a kitten — now appropriately named Beemer — stowed away in the undercarriage of the car.

In any other vehicle, the car’s inside would be too hot for the kitten to survive, Whitney Malin, who helped rescue Beemer from the car, tells PEOPLE.

Since South Orange’s animal control was fired eight years ago, Malin is the person others seek out for help when animal issues arise, she says. When she first heard the kitten was stuck, her instant advice to the couple was “don’t call the fire department” — they have the heavy equipment for a rescue, but in Malin’s experience they tend to scare kittens into finding a deeper hiding spot.

“Meanwhile, I’m telling everybody, ‘I could get this kitten out in 10 minutes if everybody’s just quiet,’ but it didn’t work that way,” Malin recalls. “It was three hours of [firefighters] jacking up the car and ripping up the undercarriage.”

Malin’s approach typically involves YouTube videos of kittens crying, plus some bacon and tuna, to lure a kitten out. After an unsuccessful first night, Malin went home and returned the next day with her Havahart trap — a humane method of trapping cats.

She got to work with her kitten meow videos, bacon and tuna, and “within 10 minutes I had her,” Malin tells PEOPLE. After the rescue, Malin took Beemer to Dr. Markos at Valley Vet, who has helped her with many previous rescues. Malin adds that the kitten is so easy to love that even the veterinarian “fell in love with her, too.”

Beemer then went to live temporarily with Malin’s rescue partner, Lisa Hamer, and together, they’re facilitating the kitten’s adoption. Beemer is recovering well after the rescue, Malin says, and she is having a great time playing in Hamer’s house as she waits for a forever family.