Firefighters rescue kitten trapped inside RV

Firefighters worked for an hour and a half freeing a kitten from the inside of an RV on Thursday, dubbing the kitten “Flame” once he was safe.

Pam Woods, 55, said that her husband had heard a cat meowing throughout the night Wednesday at their home, Vancouver RV Park in Hazel Dell.

She said she thought, though, that it was probably the neighbor’s cat.

But on Thursday morning, when she went and spoke with her neighbor, Wood learned that her neighbor’s cats had been inside all night.

“She said, ‘Well, let’s climb under the bus,'” Woods said. That’s when she found a tiny kitten, probably 2 months old.

“Evidently, there was a little kitten trapped inside the electrical box,” she said.

She called 911 and firefighters from Clark County Fire District 6 responded.

“There was only a little hole, just as big as him, but he pushed the wires and got inside,” she said. “He couldn’t get himself turned back around because of the insulation.”

The four firefighters spent a fair amount of time figuring out where the kitten was, said firefighter Aaron Hathaway. Capt. Nick McCarty had the bright idea to use a video laryngoscope, usually fed down someone’s throat, to find the cat. They also used some tuna fish to coax him out.

“We had it going from all angles. It was a team effort,” Hathaway said.

They worked for an hour and a half, getting dirty and oil-covered, to free the cat. Once the kitten got out of the hole, he started scampering around other parts of the RV, Hathaway said. That is, until firefighter John Bacon snatched him up.

The kitten was angry, Woods said, but OK.

Firefighters connected with officers from the Clark County Animal Protection & Control to get the kitten to the Humane Society for Southwest Washington.

Woods said she called the humane society Friday and learned that the cat had been bathed and would undergo surgery to repair a hernia.

“I wanted to keep him but my husband said no,” she said. “(Little Flame) is going to be an awesome pet for whoever takes him.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.