Kitten Takes Wing--It Was a Purr-fect Rescue

On a chicken wing and a prayer, Ellie the kitten has been saved.

After four days under the refrigerated food cases in a La Mirada supermarket, the tiny female kitten finally surfaced early Thursday when rescuers served up a fried chicken wing.

“Who would have guessed it, a chicken wing?” asked Terri Brown, who helped rescue the steel-gray kitten and now wants to keep her.

The La Mirada housewife was among several who tried to coax the kitten out of the cooling ducts where it had been hiding since Sunday at the Von’s supermarket at Valley View Avenue and Imperial Highway. The kitten had slipped through the front door and into the ducts before store employees could catch her.

Animal control officers and Von’s officials had offered everything from fresh mackerel to tuna to “here kitty” calls to draw the kitten out from the crawl space under the delicatessen and dairy cases that line the market’s back walls.

Rescuers resorted to the chicken wing strategy out of desperation, said Brown, who has worked for animal groups for years and went to the market Wednesday after a friend told her about the stranded kitten.

About 7 p.m., Brown persuaded store officials to let her crawl into the attic and lower a tiny wire trap baited with mackerel down a narrow shaft behind the deli case. But the fresh fish failed to interest the kitten. A friend of Brown then suggested chicken wings. “It was a long shot,” Brown said, “but it paid off.”

Sometime after midnight, the kitten, whom employees named “Ellie in the Deli,” stepped into the wire cage for a nibble and the trapdoor closed.

“Early this morning I got a call from the store and I knew it was over. She’d come out,” a smiling Brown said as she cuddled the kitten in her living room. Purring loudly in the arms of Brown’s 8-year-old daughter, Tiffany, the kitten’s green eyes were nearly closed.

“She’s a little scared,” Brown said. “But a few days of quiet and milk will cure her shakes.”

The kitten, which appears to be about 8 to 10 weeks old, was an instant hit in the Brown household, which renamed her Nellie after a former cat.

“My husband said after all I went through to get the kitten I could keep it,” Brown said. “I’ve rescued a lot of animals, but this one is special. I think she’s here to stay.”

At the supermarket, manager Frank Quiros was relieved that Ellie had been freed.

“I was having trouble getting to sleep at night,” Quiros said. “Now maybe we can get some work done around here. But the way the phone is ringing, that’s doubtful.”

Dozens of concerned callers phoned the store Thursday morning, offering Quiros numerous tips to get the kitten out, unaware that she had already been rescued.