After picking up her rental car in Burlingame, Joanna Mateo made two stops on her 37-mile ride to a friend’s house in San Rafael’s Gerstle Park neighborhood, and both times she was puzzled by the sound of cats meowing.

That was about a month ago — and it turned out to be a tale neighbors are still talking about. Mateo and her daughter, Isabella, 13, had flown into San Francisco International Airport from Tallahassee, Fla. They planned to stay with a friend, Judy Milani, in San Rafael, while visiting Mateo’s parents, Bob and Alice Palmer, who live next door to Milani.

First, however, Mateo stopped at her aunt’s house in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood.

“As we get out and we’re walking up the stairs, it’s weird, I hear kitty-cat sounds,” Mateo said. But she just assumed it must be a neighbor’s cat.

After about an hour’s visit, Mateo and Isabella got back in the rental car, a brand new Honda Accord; the cat sounds had disappeared. They drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped in Sausalito for ice cream.

“I’m telling you; I’m going 70 to 75 miles per hour,” Mateo said. “Again as soon as we stopped in Sausalito and parked, I hear the meows again. It’s the weirdest damn thing. Kitty-cat sounds are following us.”

When they return from having ice cream, once again the sounds have disappeared, so they drive to Mateo’s parents’ house.

“When I get out, there were a lot of meows. I’m thinking this is ridiculous. They’re not following me. I’m not hearing things. There are cats here somewhere.”

So Mateo looks all around the car and realizes the meows are coming from the back of the car. She looks in the trunk, and it’s empty.

“I said, ‘Oh, dear God they’re underneath the car!'”

And that is where she found the first two black and white kittens, stowaways in the car’s hollow bumper. It would take about an hour for the other two, slightly smaller all-black kittens to emerge. All four kittens, no more than a month old, were healthy and unharmed by their wild ride.

Milani, who is caring for the kittens until they can be adopted, said, “It’s just incredible that they weren’t killed,” given the kittens’ proximity to the car’s exhaust pipe with its heat and fumes.

Milani has named the kittens Bella, Baci, Bene and Buono. The kittens, three of which are male and one female, have been tested for feline leukemia, spayed and neutered, dewormed and vaccinated. The Marin Cat Connection is assisting with the adoption process.

Anne Allen, president of the Marin Cat Connection, said she called the Payless Car Rental company, where Mateo got her rental car, in an attempt to figure out how the kittens made their way into the car and what may have become of their mother. She learned only that the car had recently been delivered by truck to Burlingame from Los Angeles.

Barry Winick, who manages the Payless office, said, “How they got in there? I haven’t got a clue.”

It’s only the latest local cat stowaway saga.

In March, a cat climbed into the engine compartment of a parked van in Strawberry and was discovered by the driver at a gas station in Santa Cruz. That cat was transported to the Marin Humane Society and adopted in April.