They may be just a few weeks old, but four kittens already have quite a life story.
The young felines are recovering after they were rescued from inside a bag thrown in the trash in Brooklyn.
A man was walking his dog in Sunset Park on Sunday when he heard a strange noise coming from a garbage pile. He quickly called a volunteer with the Brooklyn Bridge Animal Welfare Coalition.
"[He] was told 'You need to open the garbage can,' and realized the sound was coming from a tied-up garbage bag," said Anne Levin, the executive director of the group.
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The noise the man heard was the mews and cries of the kittens, three sisters and a brother, trapped inside a bag in a trash can. Levin and her team took over after that. The tiny cats are now being fed every couple of hours — exactly what they need to keep growing.
"These guys, despite their start in a garbage bag, have been really healthy and fat and chunky and what we like for kittens," Levin told NBC New York.
Levin said the four kittens, less than two weeks old, almost never got the chance to grow, however. Not if it hadn't been for the man who walked by the trash can at the perfect time, and cared enough to check.
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"Took a moment to investigate something that was concerning about animals," Levin said.
The felines have since been named: Maya, Unreal, Unity and Blender, the boy of the bunch. Levin said it's hard to think about how someone could put the little creatures in the bag in the first place.
"You like to think there’s no ill intent, that maybe someone was just overwhelmed and didn't know what to do. But there’s really lots of things you can do," she said. "You can reach out to the city shelter, you can call 311, there’s rescues."
A 311 complaint was later filed, though Levin wants animal cruelty cases and reports to be given more attention citywide. She hopes the survival stories of the kittens will inspire others to take action.
"Reach out to your city councilmember, to the mayor's office," she said. "They need to know that this is important to New Yorkers."
Once the four get their vaccines and are old enough, the kittens will be at the Brooklyn Cat Café, where they’ll be up for adoption in early 2025.
