Diego’s motorcycle commute from work last Tuesday began like any other. But as he made his way down a busy highway, he noted an unusual traffic jam in the left lane. He carefully maneuvered past the stopped cars, then slammed on his brakes when he realized
why everyone had come to a standstill.
“As I’m passing up the lane of traffic, I noticed something up ahead in the middle of the lane move towards the edge …” Diego told The Dodo. “Honestly, it looked like a bag or some kind of trash.”
Within seconds, Diego realized that the object he’d assumed to be trash was actually a little kitten lying helplessly in the middle of oncoming traffic. That’s when he decided to pull over.
“There was not a thought in my mind once I seen it other than let me get this cat off the road!” Diego said.
Diego veered onto the emergency lane, parked his bike and ran back into traffic for the kitten.
“I turned off my bike and ran as fast as I could to get it off the highway,” Diego said. “It felt like the slowest sprint of my life!”
Luckily, another car was stopping traffic in that lane, so Diego was able to scoop the baby up safely and return to his bike on the shoulder of the freeway.
Once the kitten was safely in his hands, Diego was relieved to find that the poor baby was in good shape.
“He had no physical injuries when I picked him up, so I don’t think anyone dropped [him] from a car,” Diego wrote on Instagram. “[He] likely was in someone’s engine bay and had a low fall.”
Diego considered placing the kitten in his work bag at first for safekeeping on the rest of their way home. But he ended up placing the kitten in his jacket instead and drove home with one hand on the handlebars and the other resting on the kitten.
“I only had about 5 miles left and the kitten was perfectly calm on the way home,” Diego said. “He just buried himself into my side and I’m guessing that kept him relaxed.”
You can watch more footage from the rescue here:
As soon as Diego arrived home, he placed the kitten — whom he named Lucky — in a guest bedroom to decompress. Scared, Lucky ran into the closet and hid for the rest of the day, hissing whenever Diego would go to check on him.
Still, Diego refused to give up on winning Lucky over. He continued visiting Lucky every hour, which paid off quicker than he’d imagined.
“I would check on him every hour and try and make him feel comfortable,” Diego said. “After a couple hours, he stopped hissing at me and started to let me hold him.”
Diego was overjoyed to finally win Lucky’s affection, but there was one person in the house who didn’t have to try at all. Diego’s young daughter, Allison, has loved animals all her life — and Lucky is no exception.
“It was almost instant that my daughter started asking about the kitty and wanting to pet him,” Diego said. “When she gets up in the morning, she would always ask for ’Mommy’ and now she asks for ‘kitty’ … that’s when I knew she was attached.”
Allison and Lucky hit it off right away, becoming immediately inseparable. And while Diego wasn’t intending on keeping Lucky at first, he soon realized that the sweet little kitten was already right where he belonged.
You can see Lucky settle into his new home here:
Lucky is now officially part of Diego’s family, and they can’t imagine life without him. Though people continue to praise Diego for stopping to rescue the tiny kitten from the middle of the highway, he insists he was simply doing what’s always come naturally to him.
“I’ve always brought animals home,” Diego said. “I can’t stand to see animals in need.”
