KINGSTON – A stray 6-week-old calico kitten who accidentally traveled from New Jersey to New Hampshire has been adopted.

When C.G. Shaffer of Raymond saw a newspaper article about the kitten’s journey up the East Coast in the underbelly of a Ford Explorer, she called the Kingston Police Department the same day.

Shaffer was one of about 75 calls inquiring about adopting the kitten, who the animal control officer had named “Jersey.” The frail female climbed into the spare tire compartment of a Ford Explorer and couldn’t find her way out, according to Chief Donald Briggs.

The kitten traveled in the compartment for nearly six hours and more than 300 miles Sept. 13. The elderly couple who owned the Explorer heard “meows” but couldn’t place where the sound was coming from. The couple stopped to eat in Connecticut, where they heard the crying again. The husband and wife kept driving and finally stopped in New Hampshire at Reynolds Trailers in Kingston, off Route 125, where they discovered the origin of the noise.

With the help of Reynolds Trailers’ employees, the Kingston animal control officer moved the spare tire down, carefully reached up and got the cat.

The animal control office did a background search on Shaffer to make sure she would be a good caretaker.

“They are very cautious before handing over an animal,” Shaffer said.

She received the call Thursday that the kitten was ready to be picked up.

“I won the prize,” she said.

The newly renamed “Phoenix” joins two dogs and another cat at the Shaffer home.

Words can barely explain the gratitude felt by a Calgary woman towards four firefighters who came to the rescue of her 15-year-old Chihuahua accidentally locked in the car.

This past summer, Charlotte Barber was popping up to drop something off in her southwest apartment when she realized she had locked her keys in her car along with her beloved Max.

As the mercury crept up to that day’s high of 27 C, Barber realized the urgency of the situation and feared for her dog’s life.

Her fingers went immediately to the phone pad where she began dialling the numbers of various locksmiths and roadside-assistance companies throughout the city, none of whom showed any compassion for her dire emergency. Finally, Barber dialled the three most important numbers in the phone directory, 911.

To the relief of Barber, members of the Calgary Fire Department pulled up in front of the building mere minutes later. Lacking the necessary tools, it took the men nearly 45 minutes to unlock the door using a coat hanger.

Scooping the dog into her arms and planting a huge kiss on him, Barber was overwhelmed with gratitude for the firefighters who saved her most trusted companion.

For their efforts and empathy, Barber wished to send her sincerest appreciation to the Calgary Fire Department.

WHITE PLAINS - When he was 2 years old, Todd O’Neill’s mom remembers, he clambered out of his playpen and disappeared.

“I was frantic,” Dolores O’Neill recalled. “I even called the police.”

Before they arrived however, a neighbor came over with the toddler in hand. He had climbed over the fence into the yard next door.

O’Neill, now 39, has been climbing ever since.

“I’m pretty good at it,” he said, which is a good thing. As a tree surgeon, O’Neill climbs trees that tower above the largest homes, taking down dead limbs and branches. In the past 10 years he’s put his skill to another use, rescuing live cats from lofty heights in and around White Plains.

“I’ve rescued about 40 or 50 cats from trees, and one pit bull puppy,” he said with a grin. “Most people don’t know that pit bulls can climb. This guy was about 20 feet up.”

O’Neill was born and raised in White Plains. His heroics began when a neighbor’s cat was stuck about 50 feet up a 90-foot-tall oak tree.

“He’d been up there a couple of days, and they’d called the Fire Department but were told that they don’t rescue cats,” he said. “So they asked me if I’d give it a try.”

O’Neill put on his climbing harness, tossed a rope over a tree branch, grabbed a pillowcase and started climbing. Minutes later, the cat was in the bag and O’Neill was heading back to earth.

“He was pretty friendly, which was good because it was my first rescue,” the White Plains man said. “About 30 people were watching me, and they all cheered when we came down. I felt like Spider-Man.”

Since, then, largely through word-of-mouth, the man his friends call “Todd the Tree Guy” has been rescuing frantic felines. “I charge for tree work, but not for saving cats,” he said. “Sometimes people bake you a cake or give you cookies or something like that, but to me it’s just a way to help out. It gives me a sense of neighborliness.”

He’s rescued cats that were as high as 60 feet up, which to a cat, he figures, “would be like a 30-story building.”

When the Yonkers Fire Department blasted Treetop the tiger cat out of a tree with a high pressure hose last week, O’Neill was not especially impressed.

“That was a very barbaric way of dealing with the issue,” he said.

Cats usually will come down by themselves, O’Neill said, but if they’ve been in a tree for three days it’s time to go get them.

“They get dehydrated and disoriented and lose their sense of balance. Sometimes they holler because they’re excited or hungry,” he said. “Usually though, the owner is more frantic than the cat. A couple of times I’ve brought a cat down and when the owner let them loose they ran right back up the tree.”

Most of the time the cats are pretty easy to handle, he said, but “sometimes they get scared and flail around.”

“I’ve been clawed, scratched and bitten a few times,” he said. “Once I caught a claw right in the mouth. I just keep my vaccinations up-to-date and don’t worry about it.”

Obviously, he likes cats.

“Sure I do,” he said. “I have a cat - Simon. He’s just like me. He climbs the curtains, wicker chairs, whatever he sees.”

The fire began Early Saturday morning in the 2800 block of Homewood Drive.

Elizabeth Wilhelm was awakened by the barking of “Puppy no Name”. It’s the name she gave the dog after it showed up on her doorstep last February.

“The dog was up on my front porch here. It was skin and bones and it was halfway frozen, she said.”

A child barrier kept the dog along with Wilhelm’s other pets enclosed in her room. But Puppy No Name apparently jumped the barrier and discovered the fire, then jumped back over to wake Wilhelm.

“She started in my face barking and barking and then I turned over on my back. She even clawed my stomach. I don’t know if the dog did it to save me or it was just scared but it did save my life.”

Elizabeth Wilhelm made it out safely along with one of her dogs. Three other pets, including the stray, died in the fire. Another cat is missing.

Wilhelm’s son Michael says the dog followed his mother everywhere and never jumped the barrier before.

“I think it was definitely a guardian angel and it served its time and it went back to heaven.”

Lorain fighters continue to investigate the cause but believe it may have started in a utility room.

After picking up her paycheck from Allen’s Cleaning Service, Donna Brown got into her 2001 blue Pontiac Grand Am at 11 a.m. on Friday and began to drive her husband, Albert, to an auto parts store.

Albert, who lives with his wife, their daughter, LeEssa, and his wife’s mother, on Niles School Road in Pownal, repairs Chevrolet trucks at his house for a living, often to the tune of AC/DC. On Friday he needed to pick up a new part, a grinding cut off wheel disc, to fix one of his trucks. On Kocher Drive, near Kmart in Bennington, he also got a new best friend along the way.

“I saw something in the road but thought it was a paper cup or something,” Donna, 47, said Friday. “So I swerved to avoid it, but then I saw it crawling and thought it was a ferret or something. It wasn’t until I was right up next to it that I could see what it was.”

The car came to a screeching halt.

“Get it! Get it!” Donna remembered screaming at her husband who was reading a car magazine in the back seat.

“Get what?” Albert replied, unaware of the situation.

“The kitten! There’s a kitten in the road!” Donna screamed to the back seat.

“At that point, I whip open my door, jump out of the car, and run to the little guy as fast as I can while looking around to make sure I don’t get hit,” Albert, 39, said Friday in his living room, holding the still frightened fuzzy feline to his chest hours later. “I scoop him up in my arms, and people start yelling, ‘What are you going to do with him?’ and I knew right away that I was going to take it home with us.”

Witnessing motorists got out of their cars and applauded the proud new owner of what appears to be a 4-week-old, blue-eyed, Siamese kitten, with a long hair mix, according to Albert.

“At first I didn’t know if it had gotten hit or anything, he was meowing like crazy,” he said, “but he’s been running around the house all afternoon.”

On the car ride home, with the little white-and-gray haired kitten still shaking in his arms, Albert decided to name it Lucky Number Seven: Lucky that Albert and Donna found him and the seventh addition to the Brown’s cat family. Taz, Missy, Tigger, Chevy, Molly and Garfield now have a new little brother, Albert said, the last two also being unexpected surprises from his mother.

“He’s definitely going to have a real good home,” he said. “Our other cats have seen him and they like him.”

Albert could not believe someone left the kitten to fend for itself in heavy traffic. “Leaving a cat anywhere is senseless, but in the middle of the street like that, it’s totally crazy,” he said. “It’s like leaving a new born baby that’s completely defenseless. I don’t know how anybody could do that. I really don’t understand.”

Anyone hoping to find their own pet on Kocher Drive, a road Albert said he drives on everyday, better think again. Albert said he went back and combed the entire area on foot to make sure no other kitten was abandoned.

Getting Lucky Number Seven is also out of the question. “If I leave here without this kitten, my wife’s going to kill me,” Albert told a group of interested people.

Next up for the little guy is a trip to the veterinarian, Albert said. He said Monday that it is doing very well and has moved on from only drinking milk off Donna’s fingertips.

“He’s eating very well,” he said. “He’s playing, and, oh, he’s a little devil.”

Speedy Gonzales may be “the fastest mouse in all Mexico” but he’s got nothing on another tiny terror with roots south of the border - Maddy the Chihuahua from New York City.

The 2-year-old, 4-1/2-pound pup won the title of America’s Fastest Chihuahua yesterday, leaving 14 rivals in the dust as she covered a 35-foot track in just two seconds - faster than you can spell, well, Chihuahua.

Never mind that Maddy is half poodle. She’s tiny enough for proud owner Sue Yee to transport her in a carry-on and, besides, Petco says even half-Chihuahuas are welcome.

“We knew she was a strong contender. She is very fast and focused,” Yee said. “Last year she choked, but this year she came out on top.”

Maddy’s key to success was “lots of love and intense training, including sprinting, racing up stairs and swimming,” she said.

Yee said Maddy loves to walk the 36 blocks from their three-story walkup in SoHo to Yee’s job as a Web designer at Eighth Ave. and 36th St.

“She always leads when we walk,” Yee said. On rainy days Yee tucks the dog into her pocket and takes the subway.

As for swimming, that’s easy. Yee says Maddy is a regular at the doggie beach in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Adopted from a family in East New York, Brooklyn, Maddy is an aggressive eater, Yee said. Her pet started with real chicken before switching to Royal Canin dog food, which happens to be the brand of the year’s supply of dog food she won for her first-place finish.

The dog is also downright smart.

“She understands me in Mandarin, too,” Yee laughed.

Maddy won a regional race in New York. Then, between the first and second innings of the Dodgers-Padres game in San Diego’s Petco Park, Maddy beat the best of the breed, including national champions from the last two years.

In addition to the year’s supply of dog food, Maddy won a $300 gift certificate for Yee. Up next for Maddy: ocean training, just in case anyone wants to hold a doggie swimming contest.

A large white animal, swimming in the Yangtze River, has been videotaped by a Chinese man.

The animal, scientists state, belongs to a dolphin species unique to China and feared extinct.

That was made official by Chinese authorities last Wednesday.

An international team failed to find a single baiji, the name given to the long-beaked, nearly blind dolphin, on a 38-day search along the Yangtze in November-December 2006, and the last confirmed sighting of the dolphin was in 2004 (http://www.baiji.org/expeditions/1/overview.html).

Consequently, the species has been classified as critically endangered and possibly (or even “functionally”) extinct.

So the videotape taken by Zeng Yujiang, the man who saw the baiji, may perhaps renew slim hopes for the survival of the creature, traditionally viewed as a deity by local people but whose extinction would have been attributed to human action.

Yujiang has to admit “I never saw such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it” before adding that “it jumped out of water several times”.

In the beginning of the 20th century, 5000 baijis were to be found in China. In 1990 they were 200, and only 7 have been seen in 1998.

Karen Baragona, in charge of the WWF’s Yangtze River basin program, expresses hopes that the Baiji will not go the way of the dodo bird, pointing the fact that some species have been brought back from the brink of extinction, like the white rhinos and the southern right whale.

Wang Ding, a leading expert on the species from the hydrobiology institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences speaks for the conservationists, stating that “we are very glad to see Baiji still exist in the world”.

In Switzerland, August Pfluger, a noted Baiji expert and head of Swiss Baiji.org, says “we declared the animal extinct so if there is one left, that would be fantastic”.

Last July the staff of “Go North!” visited the KARE 11 morning shows to explain their educational adventure . and to invite viewers to name a husky puppy.

Three thousand suggestions later, the puppy has a name - and so do five of her brothers and sisters.

That puppy - now much bigger - joined Go North! member Mille Porsild on our set Tuesday morning. The adorable dog will carry the name “Sunrise” - a moniker suggested by eight KARE 11 viewers.

Sunrise comes from a litter of eight, and Go North! liked user suggestions so much they used five more of your name suggestions. According to the group “We indeed received so many great names that a list has been compiled of names for future Polar Husky puppies.”

Her sisters have been named Kinupok, Luna, Sisu, and Qannik. The three males in the litter have been named Pingo, Chukchi and Yoik.

Go North! professionals visit exciting destinations … and using the Internet as a teaching tool … allow students from around the world to join the trek. The kids collaborate with topic experts, indigenous peoples, each other and Team GoNorth! live in the field.

The 46th elephant cub born in Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka recently was ceremoniously named today as Vidula.

The elephant cub received the name after a children’s radio channel initiated by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) recently.

The elephant cub got the name Vidula on the request of the pioneer of the radio channel, Sunil Sarath Perera, the Director General of SLBC.

Vidula was born to Sapumalee last week.

He is the 82nd member of the elephant family in captivity at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage.