On Oct. 9, an ordinary drive through Sandy Springs turned into a roadside rescue when another motorist flagged Nicole Motahari and Brandon Lou that a kitten was hanging beneath their car. The couple had stopped at the Abernathy Publix for cupcakes Motahari was bringing to her students at North Springs High School. After they could not spot the animal at first, they heard a faint mew near the car’s front-right wheel. Three firefighters and two police officers later worked to free the tiny passenger from the vehicle.
Rough Draft identified Motahari as a journalism and literature teacher at North Springs and said the couple’s condominium complex was about a mile from the Publix. The couple believed the kitten had climbed into their vehicle there, but that was their explanation, not something they saw. Their account leaves the animal’s exact path unknown while grounding the rescue in the route they were making that morning.
Motahari recounted the sequence in an interview with Rough Draft Atlanta. The warning came from a woman honking urgently and pointing out the cat under the car. The couple stopped to search, but initially could not see where it was. As they carefully made their way toward the school, they heard the kitten’s faint call from the front-right side. What had begun as a quick cupcake stop became a rescue that required help from local emergency crews.
At first, the kitten was not visible. The couple searched around the car but could not find the source of the warning. As they moved carefully through rush-hour traffic, a faint sound gave them a clue: it was coming from the front-right side. Motahari’s account describes a gradual discovery, from another driver’s alert to the kitten’s mew, before city firefighters and police helped with the extraction.
The kitten was lodged in the vehicle near a front wheel. Motahari told the outlet that it ultimately took three Sandy Springs firefighters and two police officers to get the animal out. Atlanta News First later reported that fire personnel and local police responded and described the kitten as trapped in the car’s shock absorber. The two accounts use slightly different terms for the tight space, so the shared fact is simple: the kitten was stuck in the car and responders freed it.
Once the kitten was out, Motahari and Lou took it to a veterinarian. The animal was estimated to be about six weeks old and weighed 1.2 pounds, Motahari told Rough Draft. She said in that Oct. 12 interview that the couple were feeding the kitten whenever it wanted and planned to keep doing so until it reached two pounds. That was the care update they shared at the time; the later fire-department update described the kitten as recovering in its new home.
The rescue turned into an adoption. Motahari told the reporter that after the excitement, they could not send the kitten away, so they decided to keep it. The couple named the new arrival Friday Shadow. Their decision gave the kitten a home with the people who had been in the car when the warning came, after city firefighters and police had helped with the difficult extraction.
The name and the timing quickly became part of the family story. Motahari said she and Lou were married on Halloween, and she described the kitten’s arrival as an unexpected anniversary present. She also shared a smaller snapshot of the first days together: Friday Shadow was so little that the kitten could slip beneath the bathroom cabinet. Once, the couple could not find the animal until they opened a drawer and spotted it there.
Atlanta News First published a separate follow-up on Oct. 14, attributing its account and rescue image to the Sandy Springs Fire Department. The department-attributed report said Friday Shadow was recovering well in the adopters’ home. That later update corroborated the safe outcome after Rough Draft’s earlier, interview-based account of the rescue, veterinary visit and adoption.
Motahari gave the firefighters and police officers credit for the outcome, saying they went out of their way to help a tiny animal. The story began with a stranger noticing something under a car and insisting that the couple stop to look. It ended with trained responders freeing the kitten, a veterinary check and a home with the people who had stopped to find it.
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