Arizona Department of Transportation workers usually aren\u2019t in the animal rescue business, but Thursday they were doing just that for a cat stuck between two freeways.<\/p>\n
The workers were responding to a call that reported the cat on the heavily traveled transition ramp from State Route 51 to eastbound Loop 202.<\/p>\n
Incident Response Unit crew member Travis Benthin arrived on scene and came up with a plan to rescue the kitten, who was perched on the ledge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to not spook it,\u201d Benthin said in a press release. \u201cSo I turned my raincoat inside out because it\u2019s not as bright or distracting and put it on along with my gloves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow IRU member Derik Woitaszewski had arrived by that point and positioned his truck to give Benthin a safer environment.<\/p>\n
Benthin approached the cat, who wasn\u2019t fond of him at first.<\/p>\n
\n
\u201cIt hissed at me and I reached out with my left hand and put my right arm around it,\u201d Benthin said. \u201cIt started to jump off (the ledge) and I was able to grab it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rescued cat was taken to Heidi\u2019s Village, a nearby Phoenix animal shelter that Woitaszewski had taken a rescued dog to previously.<\/p>\n
The freeway trauma was a bit much for the cat, as Benthin said it hid under the seat. By the time they arrived at the shelter, it was hiding in the back of the truck.<\/p>\n
Benthin then gave the cat to the Heidi\u2019s Village staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a gorgeous cat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
ADOT officials say anyone seeing an animal on or near freeways should call 911. The recommend not attempting to make the rescue themselves. ADOT crews will respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arizona Department of Transportation workers usually aren\u2019t in the animal rescue business, but Thursday they were doing just…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":329833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-331368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115434416006037856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}