Zelda's Story

A few months ago Gary was leaving work as usual. As he was walking to his car he noticed a car across the street drive by. The car stopped, someone got out of the passengers seat, then dropped something off onto the sidewalk. He wasn't sure what it was just except that he noticed it moving. As Gary crossed the street he quickly learned it was a kitten no bigger than the palm of his hand! He messaged me and tried to grab her but she just kept walking onto the construction zone she was left at.

As soon as he told me we began formulating a plan to catch her. It was a hot day and if anything we just need to get her into safe hands. At this point I had no plans on keeping a cat (Gary might have thought otherwise) but we couldn't just leave her. We brought towels, cat food, a can of tuna, water, and our laundry basket to attempt a makeshift trap.

We waited around for about 20 minutes but I couldn't see nor hear her. Her previous owners left her at what I call a construction dump-- a place where construction workers dumped gravel, trash, lumber, and parked their tractors. Basically there's nothing but trash with little to no foot traffic in the area. Gary had to go back to work, so I waited around and tried to look out for anything moving. No one was nearby so I decided to try meowing. This has never worked for me in the past (probably because I sound ridiculous), so I didn't have high hopes. But as soon as I started meowing she responded with her own meows! She slowly started walking out from the chain link fence and I couldn't believe how tiny she was. It's hard to get a scale of things from photographs but she definitely could fit on the palm of my hand. I was afraid of scaring her away so I wasn't sure what to do next. I tried feeding her some tuna but she wasn't interested. Then I tried to pet her and she didn't even flinch. I quickly grabbed her and pulled her through the fence. I couldn't believe it! It was a very surreal moment.

We immediately took her to the nearest veterinarian and was told she was about 4-5 weeks old and completely healthy. We were so relieved! Because she was so small I was afraid she wouldn't make it through the night. The first few weeks I hardly got any sleep and constantly woke up in the night to check on her.

Zelda is now a spunky little 4 month old getting into trouble around the house. Gary and I are definitely a little on the obsessed side.  Both of our phones ran out of space because we took too many photos of her! Neither of us ever thought we'd have a cat and only dreamed of getting dogs, but Zelda's changed our minds. We are even thinking of getting her a friend to play with :)