Suffolk County Police rescued a kitten nestled in a parked car after a Walmart shopper heard meows coming from the engine in the store’s parking lot in Middle Island on Sunday morning.

Shopper Carol Poallo said she had come out of the store after buying clothes when she heard plaintive feline cries from a Nissan Altima.

“I heard a meow,” Poallo, 57, of Shirley said. “It wasn’t a normal meowing.”

She looked in the windows of the car, thinking an owner had left it inside.

“I was gonna bust the windows, I don’t care, I’ll rot in an orange suit for an animal,” she said. Soon, she realized it was coming from under the hood. “I went closer to the fender well and it got louder and louder,” she said.

Poallo said she went back inside the store, and the car’s owner was paged and came outside and opened the hood, but the kitten was out of reach. Another shopper opened a can of cat food under the vehicle to try to lure the skittish kitty out, but it stayed put.

A police spokeswoman said officers from the Sixth Precinct and the Emergency Service Section responded to a call at approximately 8:50 a.m. of a cat inside the engine compartment of a vehicle.

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Poallo said the police arrived and began removing the fender before finally pulling the cat out from the struts.

The cat was freed after about 20 minutes, police said. Police said a woman at the scene had adopted the animal.

“They handed the kitten to me and it kissed me with its nose,” Poallo said. She named the approximately 2-month-old black cat “Lucky.”

Poallo said “Lucky,” who joins two other cats at her home, was uninjured.

“It’s my kitten now,” she said.

Before the kitten was rescued, Poallo said she promised it she would take it home.

“I’m an animal lover,” said Poallo. “Thank God it wasn’t a horse.”