BEVERLY HILLS : Airline Agrees to Ground Plane in Search for Cat

Tower Air agreed Monday to ground one of its planes for 24 hours to let a distraught owner of a 3-year-old cat search for the animal.

The cat’s owner, Carol Ann Timmel, said the animal, named Tabitha, escaped from a kennel in the cargo hold of a New York-to-Los Angeles flight June 30.

Tower agreed to ground the plane for 24 hours, starting at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday through 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, Timmel’s lawyer Donald David said. The airline acted after being threatened with a lawsuit.

Carol Dowling, a Tower spokeswoman, said Nick Lacey, the airline’s vice president of operations, plans to meet Kimmel at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport after the plane arrives from Los Angeles late Monday night.

“We’re going to let this be basically her search. We’re really hoping we will find the cat but it’s been 11 or 12 days and the chances of finding her are diminished,” Dowling said.

“Tabitha is approximately the size of two tea cups and the plane is approximately the size of a football field,” Timmel told reporters.

Timmel, 20, an actress who had just moved to Los Angeles from New York, said she would look for “as long as it takes” to find the feline.