Another ‘lucky’ feline tale

Remember how we all went gaga over the story of Lucky, the one-legged cheetah in the VW Golf ad by Ogilvy Cape Town earlier this year? Well, how about this tale of a one-eyed kitten surviving a journey across Jozi in an Opel engine?

This is a true story - it happened to AdVantage designer Dave and his family a few months ago. His wife drives the family Opel 60km across town every day to get to work, through tons of traffic, highways and byways, north to south - an average two-hour journey there and back to work in rush hour.

One evening she gets home and tells Dave there's a funny noise coming from their Opel Astra Estate engine. So Dave takes a look and finds this tiny black and white kitten mewling pathetically: "It was shaking from fright - my wife had driven 60km on the country's busiest and deadliest highways and roads with this kitten in the engine! But that's not all - so I'm holding the trembling kitten and I count four feet, two ears and ONE eye - the poor thing!"

They rush it to the vet, where, apart from the fact that it has only one eye, it has surprisingly not suffered any major injury. They estimate it to be about eight weeks old.

Dave and his family decide to adopt the kitten, which they call Sneax (because of his bright white paws like sneakers and the fact that he ‘sneaked' into the car). Says Dave: "We couldn't decide on a name at first, my wife wanted to call him Rider and I wanted to call him Opel..."

We're happy to report that several months later, Sneax is doing well, is an integral part of the family (read: has taken over the household!) and his favourite things are chasing the mouse pointer on Dave's Mac screen, shoelaces and knocking off the fridge magnets. He wants to be Spiderman when he grows up.

What can I say - people who work at AdVantage have heart and Sneax is one ‘lucky' kitty! And if Opel want to option this fuzzy tale for an ad, Sneax will take his credits in pilchards...