A tiny kitten rescued from a container of construction waste at the Patrick County Transfer Station last month has found a new home.
Transfer Station employee Dustin Whorley said a company delivered a roll-off container filled with construction waste on Sept. 24. As the driver emptied the container, Whorley spotted an unexpected passenger.
“When he backed in to dump it, he dumped all of the load out, and when I looked up there was a cat in the trailer, a little kitten,” he said.
Whorley said he and other workers alerted the driver and attempted to rescue the kitten.
“She was sitting at the top of the trailer of the roll-off container, so we went up there and it ran back down and I grabbed it before she hit the ground. She bit me and I held onto it and we wrapped it in a towel and took her to the animal shelter. She was very, very small. I’m surprised it was even weaned off her mother,” he said.
The kitten was quarantined after biting Whorley and breaking the skin. Once the quarantine period ended, she became eligible for adoption through the Patrick County Animal Shelter.
Because rescued animals must be quarantined when they bite someone and break the skin, the kitten was recently eligible for adoption at the Patrick County Animal Shelter.
“The day they posted it I believe she got adopted,” Whorley said.
Although the kitten could have climbed into the container, Whorley suspects someone deliberately placed her there.
“Of course I can’t prove it. Where the roll-off container is solid steel and it’s so high there’s no way it could have climbed in there, so I feel like somebody threw her in there,” he said.
Whorley said this was the first time an animal had been rescued from the transfer station.
“I’m just happy to save a life. We don’t deserve animals, animals are a gift to us and as humans it’s our job to take care of animals, so I feel like I was placed in the right place at the right moment to take care of her,” he said.
