One rainy day in July, Peggy Harrell, shelter director and cofounder of the Animal Rescue Fund (ARF) of Mississippi, got a call about a kitten.
The tiny animal had gotten stuck in the marshy land above a stormwater pond at an apartment complex in Byram, Mississippi — and seemed unable or unwilling to get herself out.
“The kitten was [on] a bog of growing grasses and vines,” Pippa Jackson, the other cofounder of ARF, told The Dodo. “The bog was floating, and the kitten had found a woven maze of roots that was in the middle part of the floating bog.”
The only reason the kitten hadn’t fallen through the muddy ground and into the water was her miniscule size and weight. According to Jackson, the kitten weighed less than a pound, which was light enough to keep her afloat.
A shelter volunteer, Kelly Collins, hurried to the pond to try and save the stranded kitten — but things turned out harder than she expected.
“Kelly was … very unsure about getting into the bog and falling through, and was scared she would send the kitten running and then the kitten would drown,” Jackson said. “She could sometimes hear and/or see the kitten, but it would hide.”
Collins eventually had to leave to the site. But the shelter staff knew they couldn’t give up. “We knew the kitten had little chance of survival overnight, between the water flushing through the storm drain, snakes and [the kitten] getting weak and cold and just succumbing to the elements,” Jackson wrote in a Facebook post.
Jackson recruited a group of shelter employees — who happened to be inmates from Central Mississippi Correctional Facility — to join the search for the kitten.
“She started SCREAMING to us, ‘HELP ME!’” Jackson wrote. “We began trying to find her, trying to figure out how to get to her without getting waist deep in the cold water and figure out where exactly she was.”
Some of the employees got into the water. Luckily, it wasn’t as deep as they feared it would be in some places. Still, this rescue was turning out to be one of the wettest and muddiest ones on record.
“If you have never been to an apartment complex, in the rain, with 14 inmates in stripes, wading around in a pond, you just ain’t living right,” Jackson wrote on Facebook. “We had quite an audience across the street trying to figure out what this posse was doing, slip sliding around the pond, in the weeds and calling out in kitten speak.”
Then, one of the employees saw the kitten scurry across the vines and roots — and knew it was her chance to save her. She lurched forward and seized the kitten.
The kitten — aptly named Marsha — was now safe in the care of the rescue group. They gave her a much-needed bath and the veterinary care she required.
“Marsha is quite affectionate, loves to snuggle and being held,” Jackson said. “She is also partial to hamburgers!”
It’s been months since Marsha’s initial rescue, and the once-tiny kitten has since blossomed into a beautiful, loving cat. And she’s still waiting for a family to pick her.
“She’s something special,” Jackson wrote. “She’s sassy but incredibly sweet, loves snuggles, and followed me around all day in the cat room, curious about what all I was doing. Oh, and she’s GORGEOUS!”
Hopefully, Marsha won’t have to wait too much longer for a home of her own.
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Source: New York Post
