Transit riders work together to rescue scared cat from underneath TTC streetcar

December 16, 2024 Canuck

A group of TTC riders banded together to rescue a woman’s cat from underneath a streetcar in downtown Toronto, saving one of its nine lives.

Pragti Kapoor was on her way home from work at around 4 p.m. last Friday, on-board the 504 King Street streetcar heading towards Spadina, when she heard a woman desperately screaming for the tram to stop.

When Kapoor approached the door and looked over at the woman, “almost hyperventilating” as she was hunched over underneath the train, she asked her what was going on.

“‘My cat, it’s my cat. She ran, she’s under the TTC.’ And then I screamed to tell the driver, ‘There’s a cat under the streetcar,'” Kapoor told CTV News Toronto in an interview.

In a video obtained by CTV News Toronto, what appears to be an orange and white cat can be seen stuck underneath the streetcar, nestled next to one of the vehicle’s wheels. Other passengers disembarked the TTC streetcar, Kapoor said, crouching below to see what was going on.

The cat refused to budge, Kapoor said. The streetcar driver came out with a broom at one point, she said, but the broom was not long enough to reach the frightened feline. According to Kapoor, food like a plate of hot chicken, Oreos, cat food, and even shawarma were offered to the cat in an effort to lure her out, but nothing was tempting enough to draw her out.

So, Kapoor said she took it upon herself to find tape to bind two broomsticks together – which she managed to find.

“We joined those two (broomsticks), and from one side, the traffic is still going because the red light is on and the streetcars are passing and everything’s so extremely dangerous,” Kapoor said. “So we had, including me, the driver and one other girl standing on this side to make sure that the cat doesn’t come running out from this side and goes under a car.”

Video obtained by Storyful and shot by Ian Clarke – who was a passenger on one of the streetcars stuck behind the rescue efforts – shows a few people, including the owner, sitting or lying on King Street staring at the cat or trying to grab hold of it somehow.

“Barely we could see or make out where the cat was, so it’s like playing in the dark – with even the brooms,” Kapoor said.

Kapoor said the streetcar driver attempted to open up a certain compartment containing a battery, as that was obstructing their view of where the cat was. Doing so, she adds, caused a loud bang to ring out, which startled the cat.

In the video, someone can be heard shouting “do it again” as a couple of people board the train. Kapoor said those passengers started stomping their feet inside the TTC streetcar to scare the cat out from its hiding spot.

“Then I hear somebody like right near my feet say, ‘Oh, I see her. I see her more,'” Kapoor recounted. “And then I see a woman just put her hand under the train (…) and she just grabbed her fur and pulled her out.”

Moments later in the footage, loud cheers and applause erupt, before the owner is seen hugging the streetcar driver. Kapoor said the cat was put back into her carrier and quickly zipped up.

“(The owner) was so relieved, and she had so much trust in us that once we said we got her, she was happy, and she was congratulating people,” Kapoor said.

Clarke told CTV News Toronto everyone got back on the streetcar after, and he happened to sit nearby the cat owner.

“People were going up and mentioning to her, ‘Was that you? Was that your cat?” Clarke recounted.

A spokesperson for the TTC said animals have impacted their service from time to time, adding that service was impacted for about five to seven minutes. Clarke and Kapoor said the rescue efforts took longer than that.

“We always need to take care in these situations. In this case, the quick thinking of everyone involved allowed us to avoid a catastrophe and left everyone feline fine about the way it ended,” Stuart Green, senior communications specialist at the TTC, told CTV News Toronto in an email.

After watching nearly the entire spectacle, Clarke called the whole ordeal hilarious and heartwarming.

“Encountering this little glimmer of hope and happiness and teamwork and coming together, even for how minuscule it might seem, was really nice to see that people would take the time out to help this poor woman who’s so distraught that her cat somehow escaped and got under the streetcar,” Clarke said.

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