Terrence Bracamonte was out on his morning run in his neighborhood when he thought he heard tiny cries coming from somewhere nearby. He hoped he was hearing things — and his heart fell when he noticed a box with a note taped to the side sitting at a bus stop.
“I could hear them crying from a far distance,” Bracamonte told The Dodo. “[I thought] they must really be scared.”
Bracamonte went over to investigate and read the note. It said, “Please adopt them and take care of them.” He peered inside the box and found five tiny, confused kittens crying for help. They looked to be around 2 weeks old, and their mom was nowhere in sight.
“Some of them can barely open their eyes,” Bracamonte said. “They don’t even have a blanket.”
Without hesitation, Bracamonte ended his run, scooped up the box and took the kittens straight to the vet. He knew they needed immediate attention if they were going to survive. Luckily, he seemed to have found them just in time.
Despite being so young, the kittens all appeared to be relatively healthy and doing OK. They made it through their ordeal in the box thanks to their tiny cries and Bracamonte’s compassion.
Bracamonte has experience caring for rescue animals and was planning on fostering them alongside Leo Angelo Buenavista until they could find someone to adopt them. They quickly fell in love with the tiny family, though, and have since decided to keep them all.
“We got really attached [to] them emotionally,” Bracamonte said. “They are like our little sunshine every day. Their little cries are so cute. We love them so much.”
Bracamonte wasn’t planning on adopting a family of kittens when he set out on his run that morning, but now that he has them, he truly couldn’t be happier.