“I was afraid she was going to leap,” says the narrator.
Nicole Toney was driving across a bridge on her way home from work on her lunch break when she spotted something that nearly stopped her heart.
A little kitty was balancing on the brink of the bridge.
Toney had already drove by the cat when she understood what it was and that she needed assistance, so she circled back around as soon as she could, hoping without hope that the kitten would still be there.
Toney told The Dodo, “I wanted to puke.” “I was so concerned that she wouldn’t be there when I turned around.”
@nicoletoney When I say I was so scared I almost puked….
♬ original sound – Nicole Toney
Toney pulled over to the side of the busy highway as securely as she could and was relieved to discover the cat was still there. She didn’t want to get too close to the cat for fear of scaring it away with her automobile. Toney was well aware that the situation was dangerous, and she made every effort to proceed with caution.
“I came up to her carefully because I’m afraid of heights and was afraid she’d jump, and then I just wanted to make sure I got extremely near to her so I could put my arm behind her and attempt to catch her if she jumped over the bridge,” Toney explained. “Then I grasped the nape of her neck and immobilized her, just like mama cats do when they carry their kittens by the scruff of their necks.”
The small kitten didn’t move a muscle during the entire rescue. She was visibly afraid, and despite her apprehensions about a strange lady approaching her, she appeared to recognize that Toney was there to assist her.
Toney explained, “She didn’t hiss, she didn’t claw; I suppose she was too terrified to move.” “She was basically like, ‘OK, cool, someone got me down!'” says the narrator.
Toney was relieved when she got the small cat securely inside the car. She’d been scared, but she’d saved her, and the cat appeared to be relieved as well. She merely sat in the car while the two drove home together, relieved that they weren’t on the verge of collapsing a bridge.
Toney contacted her husband on her way home and told him the story. Despite the fact that they already had five dogs and a cat, he urged her to bring the kitten home and they’d work it out from there.
“He was like, ‘OK, well, we’ll speak about it after work,’ and we never really spoke about it after that; we just sort of kept her,” Toney recounted.
The kitten was given the name Ducky by the pair since she was such a lucky duck to have survived her experience. They had two cats at home previously, Nigel and Mabel, but Mabel went missing a few years ago. They believed that once Nigel’s sister died, Ducky may become a new buddy for him.
“She reminds me a lot of [Mabel],” Toney observed. “I was thinking, ‘Man, we got to keep her!’ I felt awful for Nigel since he didn’t have his sister anymore, so I just said, ‘She can be his sister.'”
Ducky has been in her new home for a few months now, and she seems to be settling in nicely. After everything she’s gone through, she’s still a bit nervous, but she adores her new family, and her mother is grateful that she happened to drive past her that day.
“She’s quite lively and nice,” Toney added, “but I don’t think she’s totally come out of her shell yet.”