Written by Sabrina McGonigal
It happened on June 5th, around 6:30 I saw on the Pay it forward Lehigh Acres group on Facebook that there was a kitten stuck in a vending machine at the Lehigh Acres Wal-Mart, it had been there for a few hours and management wasn’t doing anything about it. I was about to be on my way up to north Florida with my girlfriend Nicole and she refused to leave before we knew that the kitten was out and safe, so my two sisters Brandy, Willow, Nicole and I got into the car and headed up to Wal-Mart, when we got there two other girls had been there for an hour trying to lure the kitten out with cat food and she wasn’t coming out. We tried moving the machine, finding where she was and such and we could hear her meow but she wasn’t in sight. Employees and management had all passed us several times and said nothing to us, they knew the cat was stuck and we’re offering no assistance. I had actually even gone into Wal-Mart and bought a screw driver to try to take the backing off of the machine to get in to find her and it wasn’t coming off. Nicole then called the fire department and they then came out, once the fire department came, and more people crowded around the machine Wal-Mart’s management team finally came out to talk to us, the fire department wasn’t able to locate where she was, and they told the manager that she needed to contact Pepsi because they were hesitant but if they didn’t get someone out with a key they would have no choice but to have ripped the machine open. After about two hours of back and forth with management and Pepsi, a man from Pepsi finally showed up to open the machine and when the machine opened Nicole was right there and reached down and the kitten was actually right in the front of the machine at the very bottom in the door. She was about 6 weeks old when we got her; she was really dirty and very hungry! We brought her home, gave her a bath and gave her some milk and kitten food! While we were bathing her and feeding her we thought of names and we thought that we needed a name that was fitting for her rescue and where she was found, and after going through a variety of different names we decided her name should be Pepper! She’s very playful and fits in really well with the other kittens and the two momma cats in her new home!