There were probably signs that the search for fugitives at the Church Avenue subway station in Brooklyn late Thursday morning was an unusual case.

Investigators are not known to use lilting, high-pitched voices in the midst of a chase. Food was used as an incentive to surrender. And when the suspects got away, few seemed to mind.

But for about two hours — amid what the Metropolitan Transportation Authority initially told riders was “ongoing N.Y.P.D. activity,” before later saying that no officers were involved — service was snarled along parts of the B and Q lines as transit personnel searched for two kittens who had scampered onto the tracks.

Around 11 a.m., the authority said, the kittens’ owner told station employees that the animals had gotten away. After a call to the authority’s rail control center, a train service supervisor was sent to investigate. At 11:06 a.m., the supervisor requested that power be removed from the rails. The supervisor and other transit workers took to the tracks, the authority said, while the owner hatched a separate scheme.