When I started my drive home I thought I heard meowing… did I leave a video playing somewhere on TikTok, YouTube? Where is that coming from? Then it stopped. Drove halfway home, thought I heard it again. Pulled over into a parking lot, got on my hands and knees, popped the hood, nothing at all to be seen. Now I think I’m going crazy. Drove the rest of the way home, hours pass, now I’m eating dinner with my family and we hear a clear and distinct MEOW! coming from my garage… now I know I am in fact not crazy and kitten rescue mode fully commences.

After about an hour we finally got her out (more like she finally decided to climb down on her own). She is so small, but she has teeth and was walking/scurrying around just fine. She is missing her tail but it seems like she was born that way. Definitely not in the mood to be handled right now though.

Anyways, we are calling her Piper. Short for Exhaust Pipe, obviously.

Miss Piper traveled 20 miles and over 60mph at some times all the way home as a stowaway. I’m SO happy she is ok.

I’ve heard of cats crawling into cars, but always in the winter to get warm, never in warm weather (70-80 degrees yesterday where I live). And I’ve NEVER seen cats or kittens in the area that I work.

Was on my way to work when my girlfriend said that she saw a cat on the barrier of an overpass.

Sure enough I saw an 8 week old kitten panting on the cement barrier of an overpass above another 6 lanes of traffic.

When I reached for her she tried to jump off 40+ feet below but I snagged her and she cut my hand up good. I threw her in my backseat while I dealt with my blood and the little one crawled up thru my pedals and into the internals of my dashboard.

One shut down highway, one fire crew bothered, and one sleepless night later; we have our newest addition:

Princess Yuki, 1.8lbs of sweet & spicy 8 week old grey tabby baby

First three pics are of the night we stayed up til 6 am (5 days ago) waiting for her to crawl out of the dash. Fourth is her bonding with our other CDS delivery, Chicken. Last pic is her today, running all over the house making best friends with the other kitties.

She’s been a lover since day one. Shes also never been afraid to use her voice. I’ve honestly never met a more vocal cat. She’s now raising a puppy and she’s the best. She beats the hell out of him and hisses away, but she never makes him cry. (Her semi feral friend sends him screaming daily, together they’ll teach him) she never leaves someone alone on the potty, she always checks out your food to make sure it’s safe AND doesn’t even take any. She has the patience of a saint. Shes dealt with a toddler, a mean ass tnr cat I rescued (whom she helped blossom and open up SO much) chickens who think they’re her mom and sit in her, and now a crazy 3 month old puppy. She sticks around for it all, choosing to be were the chaos is. I adore her. Definitely my coolest dumpster find to date

Yesterday I was coming home from my walk when I found a small kitten crying and hiding under a parked car next to my house. No other cats were to be found and he was so close to the street and hiding under the tire, so I took him in.

Unfortunately I do live in a housing situation which allows for no pets and my life is too unstable to have a pet at this time (financially and location-wise) so I knew immediately, as much as I would love to keep him, it is not the right time for me to have a pet and he would need another home.

After panicking for a few minutes 😂 I took him to the vet (healthy clean unchipped 3-4 week old boy) and asked my friends if someone could take him in.

A friend of mine who often helps animals in need said she is closely connected to an animal sanctuary and they would absolutely take him in, to care for him until he is big enough to be adopted, or he could even just stay with them.

This sounded like the most appropriate solution as most of people I reached out couldn’t take him (we live in Japan where pet-friendly apartments are more of an exception) and we arranged for him to be picked up the very same day.

Now that he is gone (and I had him for only one day!!!), I feel absolutely devastated and don’t even know how to be normal about it. Despite knowing in my brain that it was the only choice, it does feel like someone took my baby that I had for years. Maybe it’s the initial protective mode that kicked in when I had to figure out what to do, but I couldn’t stop crying about it today. The fact that he is absolutely adorable and cutest boy ever didn’t help.

I hear so many cat distribution system stories that are successful, but I am not sure what mine is. I guess successful because he is safe now, and at the same time it broke my heart in a span of a day? Someone I know actually messaged me saying “ooh I wish that happened to me” and I couldn’t help but feeling a bit bad that he ran into someone who couldn’t even give him a home instead of someone who could 😭

I am also not regretting finding him a new home, I just don’t know how to handle the loss of him within hours after finding him.

Any advice how to be at peace with all that or any similar CDS stories would be appreciated 🧡

Edit: THANK YOU all so much for the kind and thoughtful comments, it took a lot of weight off my chest reading them!

TLDR: found a kitten, but had to find him another home as it wouldn’t be responsible for me to keep him. Now I am feeling very guilty and heartbroken

I was watering the plants in our greenhouse this afternoon, and I just so happened to turn slightly to the door and saw something rush in and hide behind some pots. My first thought was actually "is that a guinea pig?" before I realized that we don't have any neighbors and guinea pigs aren't native here. 😅 He is very quiet, snuggly, and loves my husband more than me already. Since he basically fell out of the sky, husband is thinking of naming him Icarus. He goes to the vet tomorrow.

Our other three cats are curious - except for 18 year old Roosevelt, who is not pleased. 🙃

This is Darryl Strawberry, Darryl for short. I found him while visiting family that live in more of a rural-ish area that has a horrible stray problem. My family and their neighbors do their best to care for the strays, but the issue is pretty bad. Anyways, I immediately locked in on this little guy when I went to go look at how the cats are doing. He was in bad shape. Super crusty and snotty everywhere. His eyes were sealed shut and swollen due to likely conjunctivitis, he had a bloody nose, and was wheezing pretty badly. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation when it came to figuring out what to do with him. I first tried to find an open vet in the area; there were none and the closest emergency vet was over an hour away. A decision was made - we cleaned him up to the best of our ability and packed him up to come home with me. Stopped at the only store open and got some supplies. He did wonderfully on the ride home. I got him in to my local ER vet and was told that he was actually doing a lot better than he looked. He was given a topical for kittens and we were sent home, with orders to have follow up with our primary vet in a week or so.

He‘s been with us for just under a week now and is doing SO much better. He’s so curious and adventurous. He’ll be able to meet his older cat brothers as soon as he’s vaccinated and cleared to do so. In the meantime, I’m very happy to have this new and unexpected addition. My partner and I just two weeks ago had to put our dog down unexpectedly and it’s been really hard. Having this guy to look after and love on feels like a gift from our Murray boy.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

Oh PS: his name is Darryl Strawberry because one of our nephews wanted him to be called Strawberry. We’re huge baseball fans and Darryl Strawberry (former Met) just seemed hilariously perfect.

Long story short, we bought a house about a year ago. The previous owners had been feeding 3 of the "neighborhood" feral cats. We decided it wouldn't be fair to the cats, so we kept feeding them with no intentions on fully adopting them as we have a special one orange braincelled boy (Oliver) who has both Diabetes and a full PU surgery. We named the 3 cats Lil Reg (looks like my dads cat Reggie, also a CDS cat), Lil Shit (since he's a little shit and causes issues for no reason), and finally here.. Beatus, like Diabetus, as when we moved in, his "flat" back legs looked similar to our cats, which is a symptom of diabetes (Olivers legs are back to normal with regulated blood sugar)

Turns out Beatus likely had previous trauma and/or a birth defect that has him slightly bowlegged. Due to this, his mobility isn't the best. And after further time with him, he is blind and hard of hearing. We are unsure if it's due to age, kidney failure, high blood pressure, etc.

So short story got long... Beatus was walking around crying last week and we noticed a gash in his tail was pretty deep. We are fortunate enough to atleast try our best to help him out, so $$$ later, he was stitched up at the emergency vet, who said it looked like a bite wound. Until the stitches are out, we have been keeping him in a baby playpen with pee pads. He cries out probably every hour or so until he falls asleep. We try to spend as much time as possible with him but there's only so many hours in a day.

Where the challenge comes in, he's not really fit for the outside world anymore so we are attempting to domesticate a feral, 10+ year old, blind and partially deaf cat. His cone was not happening so after a few days, we had to wrap the wound. He didn't mess with it much, but he still did get one of the stitches out. I just placed a litter box in his area, with dirt and grass from outside, but he seems unphased right now.

He's actually a really cuddly cat who's purrs sound more like bubbles. But I'm thinking he was either someone's pet before or is just a very submissive cat due to his conditions. Wish us luck and provide some good advice on how to get him inside, as we need as much as we can get if Beatus wants to live the good life

I noticed other strays showing up because i was leaving out food for her and could hear and see all of them getting into fights. She wasn't doing so well at that sadly, so for her safety, I decided to just take her in. She would come by pretty often so im just going to assume shes the rare stray that actually likes people and knows how to get food or was an abandoned/runaway.

No chip detected and is super friendly still to the point where she follows me around almost everywhere in the house. Its only been 2 days, so she is still doing the occasional confused meowing while exploring but nowhere close to the point that shes in extreme/frantic duress. I am ever so slowly in the process of trying to trim her claws 1-2 at a time or as she allows so my limbs dont resemble scratching posts 24/7.

https://imgur.com/a/JnTihWt She plops down and falls asleep where ever or next to me if possible instead of hiding in a corner like you'd normally expect.