LEON VALLEY, Texas – Leon Valley firefighters got creative Saturday as they worked to rescue newborn kittens trapped in a drainage hole at a Northwest Side building.
Brittany Aguilar said she was taking a smoke break during her first day of employment at the Taco Bell at 6815 Bandera Road on Saturday afternoon when she heard meowing in the distance.
"I was like, 'Wow. I wonder where it's coming from?' So I kept walking, kept walking -- I looked up in the trees, so I was like, 'No, it's not in the trees,' so when I sat down on the building next to (Taco Bell) to smoke a cigarette, I heard them distantly in that drain hole, so I looked down and I was like, 'Oh my God, the babies are in that drainhole.'"
She reported the trapped kittens to her manager, and on her second break of the day, Aguilar said she called the nonemergency police line for assistance rescuing the trapped kittens.
Leon Valley firefighters arrived at the vacant building adjacent to the Taco Bell where Aguilar works and got to work on rescuing the cats.
Firefighters used a shop vacuum to suction the kittens out of the small drainage hole, communicating with each other to ensure they didn't harm the kittens with the suction. The two kittens were escorted to safety in a cardboard box.
"I couldn't just walk away from life," Aguilar said, adding that she will care for the kittens and name them Taco and Bell.
She said that she has a pregnant cat at home and hopes that her cat will be a surrogate mother to the kittens.