State Trooper Rescues Stray Cat from the Callahan Tunnel

Courtesy of MSPCA

It’s been quite a week for one very lucky Boston cat.

When the five-year-old feline, who rescuers believe to be a stray, wandered into the Callahan Tunnel sometime on Tuesday of last week, things could have ended tragically. The black cat, who has since been named “Callahan,” was badly injured after he crossed paths with a car inside the underwater passage between the North End and East Boston.

That’s when state trooper James Richardson just happened to be passing through.

“I saw the cat injured and lying motionless inside the tunnel next to the road and it was clear he’d been struck by a car and needed help,” Richardson says, in a statement.  “We all love and root for animals and there was no way I was going to leave him.”

So he scooped up the little guy and brought him to the MSPCA’s Angell Medical Center in Jamaica Plain.

There is good news to report, via email from the MSPCA: Callahan “was evaluated immediately by shelter veterinarian Dr. Cindi Cox, who concluded that he had suffered multiple pelvic fractures, and some mild head trauma, but would definitely survive (despite losing one of his nine lives).”

He’ll need to spend more than a month recuperating, but then he—like many animals in the MSPCA’s care—will be looking for a home. As he has not been neutered, wasn’t wearing tags and didn’t have a microchip embedded in his skin, it’s possible he’ll be adopted for the first time. “This is probably a cat who survived on hand-outs from kind people but who likely lived alone, without a home of his own,” says Alyssa Krieger, adoption center manager at the MSPCA-Angell.

She also thanked the trooper who saved little Callahan’s life.

“He’s a hero to us,” she says, “and certainly to Callahan.”