San Jose rescuers are scrambling to find a kitten believed to have been thrown from a car window on Highway 101 this week.

At around 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Nadin Adam was driving home from her haircut appointment when she saw a small orange kitten flying through her peripheral vision in the highway’s center lane. She saw the cat hit the ground and “flail” before another car appeared to drive over it, she told the Chronicle. 

The cars were traveling at around 65 mph, near the turnoff to the Capitol Expressway. Adam, 29, said she called her boyfriend in tears, torn over whether she should turn back. 

“I wanted to pull over, but I was terrified that there was going to be a very violent scene,” Adam said. “To be honest, I was like, ‘There’s no way that cat made it.’”

But at around 6:45 on Monday, California Highway Patrol received a report of a living cat on the “gore” of the road — the triangular, paved area between Highway 101 and the Capitol Expressway exit. The caller said the cat ran into the bushes when they approached, according to CHP Officer Abid Zeid. 

Kim McIntyre, who runs the St. Francis Animal Protection Society, said Wednesday she was “suspicious that the kitten may have survived.” 

McIntyre and other local rescuers — many of whom learned of the incident from a thread Adam posted to Reddit — have spent the past two days combing the side of the freeway for a body, to no avail. Usually, cats hit by cars are found close to the side of the road, McIntyre said. 

No living cat has been found either, McIntyre said. Some searchers saw an orange cat in the area, but it appeared to be an adult. Others have left out food in hopes of luring the kitten. 

It’s not uncommon for cats to be “dumped in all kinds of different places,” McIntyre said. One commenter on Adam’s Reddit thread reported seeing cats on the side of San Francisco’s Interstate 87. The problem has worsened since the pandemic, according to McIntyre, when many clinics dramatically slowed spay-neuter procedures. 

“Shelters are constantly over capacity,” she said. “There are lots of people who want to do the right thing, but get turned away at the door. People get desperate.”