A 3-month-old kitten was immediately grateful to a police officer who rescued her from a highway. She responded by arresting his heart with some snuggles.
Bella didn’t want to sit in the passenger seat of North Kansas City Police Officer Jason Smith’s patrol car. She leaped into his lap and rubbed her head against him and his steering wheel instead.
When he tried to move the cat, she’d just hop back into his lap to give him more love. She was very thankful to him for saving her from a busy highway where she had been trapped for about five hours.
Highway rescue
Smith got a report of a kitty stuck on the side of a highway and immediately went to find her. He eventually spotted the tiny kitten sitting next to a stuffed toy glove on a median wall.
He and another officer slowed down traffic to not spook the kitten into running off into traffic. Smith put on his kitty-talking voice and started to coo at the kitten. You can hear his cute kitten talk in the video of the rescue.
The kitty meowed right back at him, letting the officer know she was ready to be rescued. Smith scooped up the kitten and walked her over to the patrol car as she purred and hugged his neck.
“In the video you can see that the cat’s tail was scorched. We can only assume that the cat was curled up around an engine for warmth and then jumped out around rush hour,” Smith’s son Joshua Smith told Love Meow. “We believe she was out there for at least five hours due to a previous 911 call about the cat when the police could not find her.”
Smith immediately fell for the charming kitten and knew he had to take her home. The cat was given the name Bella and taken to the vet to be checked out and given a full workup.
A rescue souvenir
While Smith was Bella’s current source of comfort, he wanted to return to get the item that helped her survive when she was out on her own. There were reports that the glove Bella was hiding behind had been out on the highway for months.
It is believed that she found the glove and used it to stay warm. That glove is what Smith was looking for and helped him locate Bella.
So, he went back to find it for her as a “symbol of the rescue.” Bella is very happy in her new home with her humans, who she loves very much, and two rescue dogs she gets along with “only when she is up for it.”
“We are very lucky to have her in our homes. We are just as grateful for her as she was for my father rescuing her,” Joshua Smith said.
Not only is she living a happy and safe life with her new family, but she’s also become an internet celebrity. She now goes by the alias “Bella the Highway Kitty.” You can follow her adventures on Instagram @highwaykitty.