I stood shivering in the storm. My phone was waterlogged, my shoulder throbbed with pain. But I couldn’t walk away. A kitten was curled up in a rusted trap, soaking wet… and trembling.
That afternoon, the rain came fast and heavy. I got an urgent message — a mom cat and three kittens had been dumped under a stairwell in the back of a building.
I shouldn’t have gone. My shoulder was torn. I limped from a recent injury. But I threw on my raincoat, stuffed my phone in my pocket, and ran out.
No time to think. Only time to save lives.
When I arrived, I spotted the old rusted cage first. Inside, a tiny grey-and-white kitten was huddled in the corner, soaked to the bone, eyes wide with fear. The water was seeping into the metal. She was too cold to cry.
My phone started glitching from the water — the screen flickering, sound fading. But I kept calling, messaging fosters, doing everything I could before it died.
I found the mom cat and her other three kittens nearby, hiding under a piece of discarded plywood. Their fur was drenched, their bodies trembling. I scooped them up, wrapped them in whatever dry fabric I could find — my raincoat, a towel from the car — and rushed to a foster volunteer’s home.
The kittens made it. They’re safe now, dry and warm.
Me? I was soaked, freezing, and my phone? Practically dead.
But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Full story in the first c0mment.
The next morning, I sat in an orthopedic surgeon’s waiting room. My shoulder ached deeply, and my phone? It wouldn’t turn on anymore.
When the doctor finally saw me, he said the words I feared: “You may need surgery.”
That news hit harder than expected. I was already stretched thin — physically, emotionally. A surgery would mean weeks of recovery, no rescues, no lifting crates, no late-night kitten saves.
And yet, as I sat there on that stiff hospital bench, I couldn’t stop thinking about those kittens. The one in the trap. The others shivering under the stairs. How their tiny lives were now safe because I didn’t walk away.
I cried — not just from the pain or the stress — but from the overwhelming weight of it all. Rescue work breaks you sometimes. But then… it reminds you why you started.
I may lose my phone. I may go under the knife. But I’ll never regret saving them. Because sometimes, just sometimes, being their only hope… is the only thing that matters.
