Late one evening, Magee Humes received an alert on her phone that immediately raised her suspicions. As the executive director of Michigan Animal Rescue League (MARL), she's constantly monitoring the shelter, even when she's at home. So when the shelter's
outdoor motion sensors went off after hours, she knew something wasn't right.
Humes opened the camera’s live feed on her phone, and her stomach dropped when she saw a lone cardboard box resting outside their intake lobby’s door.
“[W]e've seen this kind of thing too many times before, and the box usually contains animals who need our help,” Tommy Sanfilippo, MARL’s content coordinator, told The Dodo.
The executive director raced to the shelter, hoping to get there in time to save whoever was in the box. When she arrived, she pulled back the cardboard lid to find five little kittens inside.
Thankfully, the kittens were all OK, albeit dirty. So, Humes and a few of her staff members carried the box inside, then began cleaning the kittens one by one.
“They had lots of fleas, so some late-night flea baths were in order,” Sanfilippo said.
While they were bathing the kittens, the MARL crew looked up at the window to find an adult cat “looking in at [them] and meowing” from outside. At first, they thought she could be a random stray cat stopping by. But then they realized that she was staring at the fluffy babies in their hands.
“She seemed to be super interested in the kittens,” Sanfilippo said. “So on a hunch, we decided to look back at the security footage; sure enough, this same cat had popped out of the box not long before our arrival.”
Looking back at the footage, the MARL team watched as the mama cat hopped out of the box and ran off into the darkness. She’d seemingly gone out to check out her surroundings after being abandoned in the box, and panicked when she returned to find her babies missing.
You can watch the camera footage here:
The staff swiftly let the cat inside and watched in awe as she ran to be with her little family.
“She was so excited to be reunited with her babies, and she was very friendly with our staff,” Sanfilippo said. “I think she knew that we were there to help.”
The mama cat, whom they named Post-It, was relieved to be back with her litter of kittens. She and the babies, named Crayola, Scotch, Expo, Elmer and Sharpie, soon settled into a foster home together, where they've been safe and cozy ever since.
While the team at MARL was heartbroken to find another box of abandoned animals on their doorstep, they're grateful Post-It and her kittens were found before anything happened to them. Now, they can't wait to see each of them find the loving homes they deserve.
“Mom and kittens are currently living with one of MARL's amazing fosters, and they'll be ready for adoption soon,” Sanfilippo said.
