Brian Ray was driving home from work in Idaho last week when he heard a strange sound coming from the engine compartment of his car. When he went to see what it was, he was stunned to find that a kitten had survived inside his engine compartment for 17 miles!

Brian explained that he did not hear the meowing from his car until he got home, where he asked his wife Amanda to help him figure out what it was.

“It’s crazy to have driven 17 miles … and not have noticed that I had a cat under the hood,” Brian recounted. “The kitten dove under the engine block and we couldn’t get her from below and we couldn’t get from above. And, so we tried to hatch this plan.”

Brian used a carjack to lift the front-end of the car so that his wife could get underneath it to grab the kitten. When Amanda saw the cat, she saw that she had a red spot on her face that appeared to be an injury.

“I was honestly afraid she was bleeding internally,” Amanda said. “And, that when I got her out, she was going to be like gushing blood.”

Once the Rays freed the kitten, they brought her to Simply Cats shelter, where veterinarians identified the injury.

“We later learned that that’s called degloving,” explained Simply Cat’s Outreach Coordinator Kate Beyer. “And, it is exactly that. It’s when your frontal lip gets detached from your gum line.”

The shelter has named the kitten Briar, and they said that she will soon be undergoing surgery to fix this issue. Now, the shelter is hoping that this story will serve as a warning to others.

“This is a reminder to bang on your hood when in cold weather!” the shelter wrote on Facebook. “Cats and other small critters like to climb in for warmth.”

We’re glad to see that this cat is going to be alright! Find out more about Briar’s story in the video below!