On June 13, 2006, I was photographing the front of an Arkansas and Oklahoma locomotive #5913, an old locomotive sitting dead in the the railroad’s yard at Wilburton, Oklahoma. About the time I was finishing up I heard meowing. I didn’t think much of it, thinking it was cat I had seen earlier.

After climbing down from the locomotive I began to look around for the cat. Thinking it might be under the locomotive I started looking around the wheels and frame when I found a kitten with its head stuck through a hole in the truck frame of the locomotive. The kitten had climbed up through a space into the hollow frame and not being able to back out had stuck its head through another hole, thinking it could escape.

All I could see was the kitten's head. And the kitten couldn’t get out. I went down to the railroad shops and asked for some oil thinking I could slide the kitten’s head back into the hole. The oil didn’t seem to do the trick as the kitten’s head, shaped like an arrowhead made it difficult to back out of the hole.

Since that didn’t work easily and I was worried that I would break her jaw if I pushed too hard, I went back to the shops to find a file. By this time Terry Blankenship who is a contractor for the railroad was there. He decided that grease would be better and that a file would never work anyway on the tough, thick steel.

We greased the kitten’s neck and ears and around the hole. The two of us agreed that the only way out for the kitten was to push and if we killed her then that would be better than letting her starve to death, hanging by her neck in the hole.

I folded the kitten’s ears down and pointed one side of her jaw into the hole. While Terry pulled on her legs, I pushed. In a few seconds we had the kitten free.

Covered in oil, grease and grime from the locomotive, AOK was just fine. After a bath and checkup at the vet's office in Sherwood, Arkansas, AOK the kitten will be living the life of luxury at our house at Woodson, Arkansas. The kitten is named after the reporting marks of the railroad.

David Hoge

davidhoge@mac.com

The photographs show Arkansas and Oklahoma railroad contractor Terry Blankenship helping to rescue AOK the kitten from the truck frame.

AOK the Kitten at Woodson, Arkansas. August 13, 2006