Matson workers give
$1,400 to aid kitten

About 45 Matson Navigation Co. employees have chipped in a total of $1,400 to help a newborn kitten that barely survived being trapped for 10 days in a shipping container in August.

Gary North, senior vice president of Matson's Pacific office, asked the company's Hawaii, Phoenix and Oakland headquarters employees to raise money to help pay for the $2,400 quarantine cost of the kitten, named "Matson." Some employees of Matson's parent company, Alexander & Baldwin Inc., also chipped in, he added.

The A&B Foundation had donated $1,000 and North encouraged employees to raise the balance. It took them only seven days to do it.

The employees were more than willing to help because "the cat just captivated everybody," North said. "With a name like 'Matson,' and hearing the story and seeing her on TV, everybody just jumped in. Almost all our executives contributed."

The kitten is now healthy and feisty at the Companion Animal Hospital in Kailua, where it is being quarantined until December.

Matson was apparently born in the container while it was being loaded in Oakland. Three of Matson's siblings did not survive the chilly journey across the Pacific and the suffocating heat on the Honolulu docks before the container driver found them.