Yesterday, two adorable kittens frolicking on the train tracks briefly brought subway service to standstill in Brooklyn. The kitties were spotted running up and down the tracks near the third rail at the B/Q Church Avenue station in Prospect Lefferts Gardens around 11 a.m. Thursday. The kittens were briefly caught, but they escaped immediately afterwards—it took until after 6 p.m. for officials to finally wrangle them into cages.
MTA officials initially cut off power to large portions of the B/Q line around lunchtime—the B was down for 90 minutes, and the Q was down for nearly two hours! Some people were angry: “My boss is gonna be mad at me for being late. He’s not gonna believe this one!” said one rider, according to the Post. “Can you believe this? All for goddamned cats! I hate cats!” another straphanger exclaimed. It even led some bloggers to consider philosophical debates about kitten murder.
Not everyone was so put off: “The announcer said it had to stop to rescue some cats,” straphanger Sandra Polel told the News. “I didn’t mind. I wanted to get home, but I also wanted the kittens to be safe.”
After the cats were initially caught, service was restored around 12:40 p.m. to the B and 1:10 p.m. to the Q. But by 1:30 p.m., the kittens had escaped, and were back on the tracks playing with each other. The two even fell asleep next to each other under the third rail at one point.
Finally around 6:30 p.m., two MTA workers and two NYPD transit cops were able to get them into a milk crate during a 40 minute rescue operation (the MTA suspended express train service to help the situation). “One of the officers then had an insulated glove. He just scooped them out, despite all escape tactics,” said witness Letitia Delacorte Spangler.
The 4-week old kittens, who rescuers named August and Arthur, were transported to Animal Care and Control Center in East New York. If nobody claims them in the next few days, they'll go up for adoption next week, and then you can own your very own subway kittens.
