Cat Travels to Phoenix Inside POD

Three weeks inside a sealed container — no food, water or fresh air — but except for losing a few pounds, Meatloaf appeared none the worse for wear.

Last month, the gray kitten sneaked into the PODS storage container in Pompano Beach bound for Arizona. But it wasn’t until Tuesday his meows in a Phoenix storage facility caught the attention of a company driver.

When the driver heard the kitten’s cries, the search was on. There were 500 containers, stacked three high and seven or eight deep in the facility. They moved a cluster of the containers around, trying to figure out which one the cat was in.

Once they determined the right container, the rescuers tried calling Thomas Jemmett, whose contents were inside. Unable to reach him, they went ahead and removed the 30 bolts holding the roof of the container in place, and videotaped the process.

Inside was Meatloaf, nestled in a mattress.

GOOD SHAPE

He was slightly dehydrated and hungry for attention but in "remarkably good condition," said Kim Noetzel, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Humane Society.

"I’ve never heard of an animal getting trapped inside of a POD container," said Tommy LaBarr, manager of PODS in Phoenix and Tempe. "It’s just fortunate the driver went by and heard that."

Meatloaf, named for his heft and love for the canned variety of cat food, weighed about five pounds after the three-week odyssey without food or drink.

The young cat didn’t have a microchip, a collar or any other identification.

Jemmett, reached by e-mail, showed up Tuesday, just minutes after the lid had been popped off.

"I was just short of breaking the law to get there to the PODS container," he said. "I got there as fast as I could."

He recognized the cat from his old complex, Breezes at Palm Aire in Pompano Beach. Meatloaf, he said, had a certain fondness for his own calico, a 10-year-old female named Calle.

Some nights, Meatloaf would sleep in Jemmett’s former Pompano Beach condominium along with Jemmett’s cat. He thought the cat might be a stray.

"I did the quick math in my head," Jemmett said. "The fact that he was alive. . . . It’s just amazing how he survived."

Jemmett gave them contact information for the manager of Breezes at Palm Aire, who remembered a woman who had come in the day before searching for her cat.

LOOKING GRIM

Amanda Kaufman had practically given up on a reunion with Meatloaf, the gray kitten who wandered away from her Pompano Beach apartment about three weeks earlier.

She had put up posters, talked to neighbors and called the local Humane Society.

"I figured I’d never get him back," said Kaufman, 21. Meatloaf liked to sneak out a hole in the screened-in porch and sometimes stayed away a day at a time.

"I was never going to get another cat because I never thought I’d find another cat like him," she said. "I was going to have to get a dog."

The Humane Society will watch over Meatloaf for the next few days, feeding and neutering him and implanting a microchip before he’s put on a plane and flown back to Pompano Beach.

As for Kaufman, she can’t wait to have her affectionate cat back.

"I might just throw him a little party," she said. "He’s a celebrity now."