When Cindy Gahr stepped into her front yard to check the mail, she heard a faint cry. At first, she thought it was her daughter inside the house—but the sound led her to a shocking discovery: a newborn kitten, still attached to its placenta, lying beside a heating unit just inches from being crushed.
“I was startled, sad, and shocked,” Gahr tells PEOPLE. “All I wanted was to get him inside—it was freezing out there.”
A Race Against Time
Gahr, who had experience caring for neonatal kittens years earlier, immediately sprang into action. She documented the rescue in a now-viral TikTok video, showing the fragile kitten stuck to a rock by its dried placenta.
“I haven’t done this in a while,” she says in the clip, carefully cutting the umbilical cord before wrapping the kitten in a blanket and placing it on a heating pad. She fed the tiny feline milk replacement formula, burped it, and stimulated it to help it relieve itself—but she knew the odds were slim.
A local animal rescue confirmed her fears, advising her to find a nursing mother cat while warning that the kitten likely wouldn’t survive.
A Devastating Loss
The timing couldn’t have been worse—Gahr was preparing for an out-of-state trip, juggling contractors at her home and last-minute packing. Still, she prioritized the kitten’s care, even delaying errands to tend to it.
“I thought everything was good,” she says in a follow-up video, her voice breaking. The kitten had initially latched onto a foster mother cat, but by the next morning, it had passed away.
Though heartbroken, Gahr says she doesn’t regret trying. “I really did my best,” she reflects. “The only thing I’d change is stepping outside sooner.”
A Lifelong Compassion for Strays
Gahr’s kindness toward animals isn’t new. She regularly feeds neighborhood strays and has three rescue pets of her own—including a cat she found as a newborn in her backyard years ago.
While this story didn’t have the happy ending she’d hoped for, Gahr says the overwhelming support from strangers online has been a comfort. “I just wanted to help,” she says. “And I’ll keep helping any animal I can.”
Related topics:
