The noise came from deep within. Worried, he took his phone out of his pocket to shine a light through the plane’s exhaust pipe. The engine had been removed, so he was able to watch about 15 feet away.
“I saw this hairy little head appear,” he said. “And suddenly there was another, and then another and another.”
He was surprised by what he saw: five hungry kittens meowing for their mother. Four of them were gray, one was black, and they looked like they were about a month old.
He quickly assumed the little furballs belonged to Phantom, a gray wildcat who has lived on the grounds for over a year.
“Staff always watch over her and leave dry food for her,” Falls, 48, said.
Sure enough, as Falls began to pull away, Phantom rushed up and disappeared inside the plane, he said.
“She’s a very smart cat, and she kind of worked her way through the belly of the plane to get her litter box somewhere safe, dry, and out of the weather,” Falls said. .
After some discussion, he and the museum staff decided to leave her alone to care for her babies for about six weeks.
The museum, which is on the grounds of Hickory Regional Airport and surrounded by a busy airfield, also has nearby woods filled with coyotes — not a great place for kittens, Falls noted.
“She chose the shooting star for a reason,” Falls said, adding that for a few weeks the kittens would be fine. “Who were we to argue?”
Buford Barnett, managing director of the museum of aviation, said staff believed this was Phantom’s first litter of kittens and they were all impressed with her motherhood.
They had several discussions about how to get the kittens out when the time came. “It’s a tight squeeze to get in there,” he said.
Falls and Charles Jenkins, the museum’s assistant curator, continued to monitor the cats for the next few weeks.
On October 19, Falls thought he saw something moving in the cockpit, so he jumped onto the plane’s wing to get a closer look.
“There were kittens jumping around inside,” he said. “There was a kitten in the front seat, a kitten in the back seat, and kittens going in and out of there, climbing everywhere.”
He quickly snapped some pictures to put on the Hickory Aviation Museum’s Facebook page.
“Not only are we battling the rain, wind, heat, wasps and birds, but one of the cats that roam the airport near the terminal decided to have kittens in the T-33 Shooting Star “, we read in the accompanying message.
“If anyone is looking for a kitten, please stop by during museum hours and inquire,” he continued. “That’s why we have to build [a new] museum to get our planes inside!”
Some Facebook commenters chimed in to say they wanted to adopt the kittens, and others suggested the museum contact the local humanity manager. society. There were, of course, also all sorts of puns about cats and aviation.
“This puts the T-33 into a new CATEGORY,” one person wrote.
“Mamma cat needs lessons… Next time go for the F14,” said another.
“It was the TOMcat that put her in this state to begin with,” someone else joked, referring to the F-14 Tomcat jet.
“People are really having fun with it,” Barnett said.
Days after Falls took pictures of the kittens frolicking, he said the dilemma of how to get the cats out of the jet was suddenly resolved.
“Phantom moved all the litter under a small storage shed near its food source,” he said. “She knew that once the kittens started moving, it would be difficult to get them back inside the plane if they fell.”
Falls decided it was time to call the Humane Society of Catawba County in Hickory and have animal rescuers trap the kittens safely.
“To be honest, we don’t need six cats walking back and forth inside our planes,” he said, noting that the museum is trying to raise money to move the jets into a hangar. .
In late October, the five kittens were captured using food-filled, motion-triggered cages, said Erin Hooks, director of development for the local Humane Society.
Phantom was also captured and spayed and then brought back to the aviation museum because that has always been her home, Hooks said, noting the kittens should be ready for adoption a few weeks before Christmas.
Hooks and other Humane Society workers named the kittens after former fighter jets: Prowler, Hornet, Mohawk, Corsair and Falcon.
“We probably should have named one of them Spitfire because they’re still a bit wild,” Hooks said. “Our goal is to get them into foster care quickly so they can get used to being around people and then they’ll be adopted.”
Museum director Barnett said there should be no shortage of interested applicants who have a great adoption story to tell.
“Catching a kitten in the canopy of a T-33 is about one in a million,” he said.
