A kitten that was abandoned on the side of a road has been adopted after it spent a weekend hidden in the engine of a police car.

On Friday, Washington State Patrol officer Chris Thorson found a box of kittens abandoned on a road in Pasco, and a number of them unfortunately died.

“When I was on scene and removing all the dead cats… I saw this one alive but it ran under my car and I couldn’t find it,” he told the PA news agency.

The kitten had hidden in the engine of Mr Thorson’s car and survived there for the rest of the officer’s shift before he parked at his home – where it remained until Monday.

“After I drove up to our office this morning, we could hear a kitten crying from under my hood,” Mr Thorson explained.

Mr Thorson shared a video on Twitter of the moment he opened his car bonnet for the first time to reveal the hidden cat – and appealed for someone to adopt it.

Within 30 minutes of posting the video a friend of Mr Thorson, KONA news reporter Jenna Kochenauer, offered to adopt the elusive kitten.

She has named the kitten Sandy, after Annette Sandberg, Washington State Patrol’s first female chief.