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During the 2013 kitten season, a group of neighbors heard a kitten crying deep in a bougainvillea bush. The cries began near dark and the bush was too thorny to safely extract the kitten, so they placed a bowl of food near the edge and planned to check back.

Sure enough, one of the neighbors spotted the calico kitten in a nearby courtyard at dawn the next morning and took her to Brad, a local volunteer for Stray Cat Alliance.

Brad says he could hear her cries as she was carried down the block, so he named her for bel canto singer Elly Ameling. Elly was underweight, covered in fleas, hungry and dirty, so Brad tended to all of her needs. He put her in a roomy cage to try and contain her, but she used her powerful voice to communicate her total displeasure with the arrangement.

Elly needed her own room where she could become acclimated to living indoors with other cats, so I offered to foster her. Once she was safe and free to roam the house, she became such a favorite that we couldn’t give her up.

Last May, I had a young litter that needed lots of attention. One of them continued to struggle, needing rehydration and hand feeding long after his brother. No matter how much I cleaned him, his face was always flecked with dried food, and the white fur on his back legs was stained and crusty.

I noticed that he was starting to look so much better but realized that it was Elly who successfully cleaned him, not me. She curled her paws around him and bathed him every day until he became a fluffy, healthy kitten. Not surprising, we are all so grateful for the neighborhood effort to save her!

Story submitted by an anonymous user from Los Angeles, California.

This story was originally shared on The Animal Rescue Site. Share your very own rescue story here!