Phillip the cat was caught in the grille of a car and travelled from Ngaruawahia to New Plymouth. His owners travelled down to pick him up.

A cat's tale of survival after riding four-and-a-half hours stuck behind the front grille of a car now has an unbelievable plot twist.

A domestic medium-haired feline, who is now known to be named Phillip, was found missing claws and clinging for life behind the bumper of a Chevy Camaro in New Plymouth after a 360-kilometre journey originally believed to have begun in Auckland.

The Tuesday incident and the cat's unlikely survival spread quickly across the country with news, eventually reaching the pet's worried family who live in Ngaruawahia - not Auckland.

SIMON O'CONNOR/STUFF Doug and Laura Pendergrast travelled to New Plymouth, from the Waikato, to be reunited with their cat, Phillip.

North Taranaki SPCA's Jackie Poles Smith said there had been a focus on finding the owners of the cat, which suffered severe hypothermia and shock, since it was rescued by workers of the hotel where the classic car was parked.

READ MORE: Phillip the cat's owners found after his 360km journey stuck behind car's front grille

Following extensive publicity only the Pendergrast family had come forward to claim the cat, she said.

SIMON O'CONNOR/STUFF Phillip has been dubbed the "miracle cat" after leaping behind the front grille of a travelling car in Ngaruawahia and clinging on until it arrived in New Plymouth.

Poles Smith said the Ngaruawahia-based family proved beyond a doubt Phillip was theirs - leaving all involved baffled as to how he was picked up by the car which did not stop once during its trip from Auckland to New Plymouth.

But after speaking again with the driver, Poles Smith came to realise that, while almost unbelievable, it was not entirely impossible.

She said the owner had taken the back roads through Ngaruawahia and remembered seeing out of the corner of his eye what could have been an animal sitting on a grass verge he passed.

SIMON O'CONNOR/STUFF Phillip didn't stop purring once, when his owners arrived to pick up him up on Saturday.

"He said he was doing about 30-kilometres an hour at the time," she said.

"We decided there was just no way...any cat would have been killed."

But Phillip lived near that grass verge and all parties have since conceded that by way of miracle he had "somehow leapt into the path of the car and somehow got bowled under the car and whipped up under the grille".

"People are just not going to believe it," she said.

Owners Doug and Laura Pendergrast were equally astonished by the marvel of their pet's survival, especially since they didn't know he was missing.

Laura thought he had been out roaming for a time but on Friday she came across the SPCA's photo of him on social media and had no doubt it was the family's much-loved cat.

"We noticed he hadn't been around for awhile but his food was still being eaten so we thought he was just roaming," she said.

The mother-of-four frantically tried to connect with the SPCA, which has since microchipped the cat, to let them know she was Phillip's owner, all while trying to make sense of why reports were saying her pet had been in Auckland.

"It just didn't compute," she said.

Between all involved the mystery was eventually unravelled and the Pendergrasts travelled to New Plymouth on Saturday to pick him up.

"I know my cat, I would know him anywhere," she said.

"It's just an absolute miracle."