Strangers come together to help rescue kitten trapped in storm drain
By Jennifer Osting
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JEFFERSONTOWN, Kentucky (WLKY) — What started out as a cry for help on social media turned into a happy ending for a kitten trapped in a Jeffersontown storm drain.
A Reddit user made a post in the r/Louisville subreddit saying they heard a kitten meowing Wednesday night and found it sitting in a storm drain near the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Jeffersontown.
The user said police and animal control were both called to the scene, but they weren’t able to rescue the cat and said it would likely crawl out on its own.
But by Friday, the kitten could still be heard crying from the storm drain.
“I cannot get to the kitten and don’t know what to do,” the user said in their post.
The post quickly gained attention online, and several people went out to the scene Friday night with pet supplies, lights and rescue equipment.
Two of the people who headed to the scene were Andrew Dharamsey and his wife.
When they got there, they teamed up with about a dozen volunteers and members of a local dive team to search for the kitten.
Dharamsey said the area where the kitten was trapped as a 12-inch drainage pipe about 30 to 40 feet from a collection pit that was about five to six feet deep.
He said one of the volunteers climbed down into the pit while others used recordings of a mother cat calling for her kittens to try and lure the kitten out.
Eventually, they were able to use a animal control grabber tool to pull the kitten closer to them and pull it out of the storm drain.
Dharamsey and his wife, who foster cats through the Humane Society of Oldham County, then took the kitten home.
The couple said they have fostered more than 175 kittens and plan to rescue their newest one, whom they named “Christal” in honor of the other Reddit user whose post first alerted them about the situation.
They added that Christal is recovering well and has already started meeting their new foster siblings.
They also thanked everyone who responded to the post, saying it wouldn’t have been possible without the strangers who showed up in the rain to help save the kitten in distress.
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