Earlier this year, some subway riders in Brooklyn, New York, were waiting for their train to arrive at the station when they noticed some movement down on the tracks. As they looked more closely, they realized there was a cat in the path of the train.
“While most people walked past, he stayed there,” Astoria Paws Cats animal rescuer Vanessa Ayala wrote on TikTok. “Adapting to a place that was never meant to be home.”
Astoria Paws Cats
No one knew exactly how long the cat had been there, but it seemed possible that he’d actually been living inside the subway station for quite some time. He’d been struggling every day to survive in a terrifying environment, narrowly escaping getting hit by the trains.
Concerned for the cat’s safety, some people at the subway station took a video and sent it to Ayala. As soon as Ayala learned what was going on, she knew she wanted to help and tried to come up with a plan.
“I didn’t really know how I was going to rescue him,” Ayala said in a video for The Dodo.
Ayala ended up going to the station at 2 a.m., hoping it would be calmer and less crowded in the middle of the night. She set up traps with chicken and fish inside and waited to see if the cat would take the bait.
Astoria Paws Cats
The cat approached one of the traps, but right as he was about to go in, a train came and scared him away. Ayala was discouraged, but she wasn’t ready to give up.
“I was not gonna leave without him,” Ayala said.
Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, the cat was caught by one of the traps. Ayala brought him home with her and got him as comfortable as possible.
Astoria Paws Cats
“For the first time in a while, this cat was finally safe,” Ayala said.
Ayala decided to name the cat Enzo. She took Enzo to the vet, who confirmed that he was only 1 year old. He was dealing with a few broken teeth as a result of living on the streets, but he thankfully didn’t have any major health issues.
“Enzo is the proof that resilience is real,” Ayala said.
As a cat rescuer, Ayala can’t keep every single animal she helps. At first, she thought she was going to help Enzo heal and then place him with an adopter. But as the days passed, Ayala realized she couldn’t bear to part with the little cat she’d saved from the subway.
“Some cats just belong with you,” Ayala said. “And maybe he was never meant to leave.”
Living in a subway station is nothing more than a distant memory now for Enzo. Thanks to Ayala, he’ll now be safe and happy for the rest of his life.
Astoria Cats Paws
“[H]e will only know love,” Ayala wrote.
