A calico cat named Felix was luckier...

A calico cat named Felix was luckier than Loekie, the Dutch dog killed by a car after escaping from a travel kennel during a plane change in St. Louis. Felix (who is female) was discovered alive in a Pan Am jetliner 29 days after escaping from her cage in the baggage compartment while en route from Frankfurt to Los Angeles.

She remained undetected aboard the plane as it flew more than 170,000 miles to Saudi Arabia, India, New York City, London and cities in South America.

“That stinker, I can’t believe it,” said the feline’s owner, Janice Kubecki, whose Air Force husband was being transferred from Germany to Edwards Air Force Base. “We’re ecstatic.”

Although a skinny Felix was found while the plane was in London on New Year’s Day, she is not back with her family yet. Pan Am spokesman Alan Loflin pointed out in New York that Great Britain has “very stringent” laws on animals and that the cat was facing either a six-month quarantine or the death penalty until airline people intervened.

“We are working to spring the cat and return it to Mrs. Kubecki--hopefully next week,” Loflin said.

At Edwards AFB, Kubecki credited London Pan Am employee Jane Ford with saving Felix from harsh British law and said the airline told her the cat will have “a first-class pass for the rest of her life--wherever she wants to go.”

Loflin guessed that was an “unofficial” suggestion by some employee, but “I don’t see it happening.” He said he had no idea what Felix ate on her world tour.

As far as Beverly Hills police could determine, there was no fire in City Hall where they are headquartered. So they were startled to find Robert Daniel Gies, 25, address unknown, blasting the front lobby with a fire hose.

“He just came in, grabbed the hose from the wall, turned it on and started spraying,” Lt. Bill Hunt said. “He knocked a lot of historical Beverly Hills photos off the walls and blew a bunch of light fixtures off the ceiling.”

This did not escape notice for long. Hunt said, “Our officers immediately contacted him.”

Gies politely turned off the water when asked and was then booked on suspicion of vandalism and tampering with fire protection equipment. Hunt said his motive was not clear.

Gies was just a little early and in the wrong place. He could have been useful a few hours later when someone set fire to various vehicles and a boat throughout the West Hollywood area.

The trouble began shortly after 3 a.m. Thursday when flames erupted in a Jeep in the 1200 block of North Ogden Drive, quickly spreading to a house and doing $22,000 worth of damage. Then came a four-wheel-drive pickup truck, two cars, a motorcycle and the boat.

“Apparently we have some sort of arsonist out there,” said county Firefighter Rafael Ortiz.

Confusion reigned, also, in the Diamond Bar area when four cows and a calf got through a hole in a pasture fence and strolled out onto the Orange Freeway during the Wednesday evening rush hour.

All southbound lanes north of Brea Canyon Road were blocked while two California Highway Patrol cars went after the herd, finally chasing them off the freeway with sirens and horns. The calf was captured on the Diamond Bar on-ramp, said CHP Officer Bill Burdick. But the cows disappeared in the dark.

Whittier Daily News Managing Editor Bill Bell was fined $15 by the Whittier Lions Club on Thursday for printing that his newspaper is having a slight problem with the city over old cars being abandoned by others on a vacant lot it owns.

Ordered to “abate” three junkers, Bell said, the newspaper did so, then asked that the lot be posted as an illegal parking, tow-away zone. That was done, Bell related, but last Thursday he found 47 cars “illegally” parked on the lot--all around the tree that bore a “giant, red no-parking sign.”

As the lot had long accommodated spillover parking for the weekly Lions meetings at the nearby Masonic Temple, there was no mystery about who owned the cars. As it happened, the Whittier Police Department was presenting the program for the meeting that day.

Apparently nobody got ticketed. But the next day, Bell noted, he got a certified letter from the city demanding that two more abandoned cars on the property be “abated.” And, he predicted accurately in his column: “My fellow Lions will probably fine me for telling this story.”