A mother cat and her five kittens were rescued after they were pulled from the ceiling and walls of SEPTA’s 63rd Street Station on the Market-Frankford Line.
According to SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch, the animals were first discovered around 6 p.m. Monday when a SEPTA supervisor noticed that there were allegedly cats in the walls or ceiling at the 63rd Street Station.
SEPTA
After working for “several hours,” SEPTA employees were in the process of pulling a kitten from the station’s ceiling, according to Busch.
However, he said that was all they could find at the time.
On Tuesday afternoon, a SEPTA employee searched the same spot and found two more kittens and the mother cat in the wall.
Two more kittens were found on Tuesday evening, Busch said in a statement.
All five kittens and the mother were reunited and, according to Busch, handed over to the Stray Cat Relief Fund of Philadelphia.
Representatives of the rescue fund said in a statement to NBC10 that the person who reported the animals to SEPTA stated that the mother cat had been abandoned in the neighborhood and “we suspect that she chose to give birth in the station behind a wall along the stairs.”
“They were somehow in the wall and also in the ceiling. SEPTA staff spent days and many hours getting the kittens to safety,” said a representative of the Stray Cat Relief Fund.
According to the relief fund, rescuers decided to name the mother cat “Joan” after Joan Woollcott, SEPTA’s first female streetcar driver.
The kittens are about three weeks old and rescuers said they are still nursing and should stay with their mother.
A SEPTA employee had taken three of the kittens home to care for them, but representatives from the rescue fund said all of the cats had been reunited.
So far, rescuers have named the kittens Tyler (after one of the SEPTA rescuers), Trollie and Westbound.
The two remaining kittens do not have names yet, rescuers said.
The animals will be available for adoption in a few months. In the meantime, the animal rescuers are looking for a permanent foster home.
Detailed information about the foster home and the Stray Cat Relief Fund can be found here on the website.
