But on this occasion the squeaking noise from the car’s rear end turned out to be a kitten trapped between the exhaust and the heat shield attached to the body.

A man in his 60s from the Melbourne suburb of Mulgrave had noticed an unusual noise coming from the back of his 2009 Holden Commodore wagon.

He called RACV roadside assistance but they couldn’t identify the problem.

So the vehicle owner drove to his nearest Holden dealer, about 5km away, to have the car checked.

Presented with a problem they’d never heard before, mechanics at the Holden dealer in Glen Waverly took the vehicle for a test drive.

With a noise confirmed, they returned to the workshop and put the car on a hoist – closer inspection found a weeks-old kitten trapped near the muffler.

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Service manager Michael Smith told Drive: “It was a tiny little thing. It wasn’t squashed but it wasn’t exactly comfortable either. The gap it was in would have only been about 5cm or so. It’s a very hot part of the car so it was quite distressed.”

Mechanics loosened the exhaust system to extract the kitten.

“We thought it had fainted but once we got it out it came to life. We had to put gloves on, it was an aggressive little bugger.”

Smith, who has been working in vehicle service departments for 20 years, said he’s never extracted a cat from a car before.

“We opened the bonnet of a car with a noise once and a possum jumped out, but never a kitten,” he said.

The dealership said the car owner took the kitten home to give it to one of his family members.

The incident happened about a month ago but has only just come to light because workers forgot to extract the images from the camera until this week.

“It sounds like a made-up story but it was real alright,” Smith said.