COURTESY OF JENNY BRUNDAGE Matson the kitten was near death when she was found after being trapped in a Matson Navigation Co. container for 10 days with no food.

Company donates
to miracle cat’s cause

More money is needed to offset
remaining quarantine costs

CORRECTION Saturday, October 23, 2004 » Matson Navigation Co. employees in Hawaii, Oakland and Phoenix had donated $1,130 by Wednesday to help pay the quarantine costs for a kitten found alive after 10 days in a Matson container. Donations from the public totaled another $1,100. Incorrect numbers were given in a Page A9 story yesterday. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin strives to make its news report fair and accurate. If you have a question or comment about news coverage, call Editor Frank Bridgewater at 529-4791 or email him at corrections@starbulletin.com.

The Alexander & Baldwin Foundation has made a $1,000 contribution to the cost of quarantine for a kitten named Matson that survived being trapped in a Matson Navigation Co. container for 10 days with no food.

Gary North, senior vice president of Matson's Pacific office, said he asked all of Matson's Hawaii, Phoenix and Oakland headquarters employees to try to reach the goal of covering the remainder of the kitten's costs: $1,400. Matson is a subsidiary of A&B.

One of Matson's original rescuers, Tedra Villaroz of Joey's Feline Friends rescue shelter in Kaneohe, said any money collected in excess of the $2,400 will be used to care for other cats rescued by the animal shelter and its spay-and-neuter program, held weekly at Companion Animal Hospital in Kailua.

A total of $1,130 has so far been collected from the public, she said.

Tax-deductible donations may be made to Feline Friends as well as the Companion Animal Hospital, where the 2-month-old female kitten is being cared for while under state quarantine.

Matson the cat was brought to Villaroz by an anonymous Safeway employee in late August after a container driver found the newborn kitten almost dead but crying for help. Villaroz said everyone was amazed that the cat, which weighed barely six ounces at first, even survived seven days of cold temperatures on the trans-Pacific voyage from Oakland, and three days of heat waiting on the docks, without food or water. "This is a real miracle story," she said.

Donations may be made to Joey's Feline Friends, P.O. Box 240052, Honolulu, HI 96824-0052; or Companion Animal Hospital, 1090 Keolu Drive, Suite 102, Kailua, HI 96734.