Owner Renee Wadsworth said her cat Norton’s tracking collar saw him travel all the way from Hataitai to Johnsonville \u2013 which was about a 30-minute drive.<\/p>\n
She said Norton, a 6-year-old Burmese cat, had a love for anything warm and cosy, and he was also “a bit dumb”.<\/p>\n
Wadsworth noticed Norton was too far from home on Thursday, and raced to his nearest location to find him.<\/p>\n
In Mount Victoria, Wadworth said she frantically looked for her cat and called his name.<\/p>\n
She couldn’t see him anywhere, until, she heard meowing from a car bonnet.<\/p>\n
“I was honestly relieved because I thought that I was going to either find just his collar… Or I thought I was going to find his body.”<\/p>\n
After explaining the situation to the Uber driver who she said looked very confused, they opened up the bonnet to find Norton deep inside the car.<\/p>\n
“He was pretty shook up. And actually, so was the Uber driver.”<\/p>\n
![\"Norton](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/norton-at-the-moment-of-rescue-JQFX754TLJCL5LNMJCNJ6JCSDI.png\")
<\/p>\n
Norton at the moment of rescue. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n
Wadsworth called a local mechanic, who managed to squeeze the cat out via the front tyre.<\/p>\n
“It looked like he was literally being birthed.”<\/p>\n
By Friday, she said Norton was perfectly fine, cuddled up on her lap.<\/p>\n
Brendan Foot service adviser Mel Barrett said she got a call on Thursday afternoon about “a bonnet meowing” and rushed up to Mount Victoria.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got nearly 10 years of experience in the industry and it’s the first time I’ve had to get a cat out of an engine bay.”<\/p>\n
She explained the cat was sitting behind the front left fog light, away from any moving parts, with a plastic panel separating him from the radiating heat.<\/p>\n
“He was quite well tucked away and safe.”<\/p>\n
Barrett said she removed the wheel guard on the tyre, turned the wheels, and managed to reach out and save Norton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cat took trips all over Wellington on Thursday, stuck inside the engine bay of an Uber driver’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,42,43,40,38,41,39,52],"class_list":["post-541729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-animals","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}