Big Hearts Start Small: A Letter, A Kitten, and A Lesson in Compassion

He arrived in the arms of a child, blanketed in fly eggs.

Not the kind of arrival you picture when you think of rescue—no big eyes, no fluffy charm. Just a tiny, struggling life, already beginning to decay before it had the chance to begin.

The little girl didn’t look away.

She and her mom drove from Alger, Ohio, to Homeless to Home because they knew that someone had to. And with them, they brought more than just the kitten—they brought a handwritten note.

The words wobble with the kind of uneven penmanship that only comes from childhood—authentic, unfiltered, and truer than most of what we read online these days.

We don’t often have time to stop and reflect in this work. There are litter boxes to scoop, mouths to feed, meds to give, traps to check, emails to answer. There's heartbreak on a near-daily basis. And somehow, in the middle of all that, this note landed like a whispered reminder:

This is why we do what we do.

This work doesn’t belong to just the staff or the volunteers or the same small circle that always steps up. It belongs to every person who believes that stray doesn’t mean worthless. That feral doesn’t mean hopeless. That unwanted doesn’t mean unworthy.

Someone in the comments of our post said, “We all need to do better for the strays.”

They’re absolutely right.

But maybe it starts with something smaller than that.

Maybe it starts with not assuming someone else will do it.

Maybe it starts with being willing to get a little uncomfortable.

Maybe it starts with a girl named Langley, a kitten barely hanging on, and a note scribbled in earnest.

We don’t know what will happen to that kitten yet. But we know this much: he mattered to someone.

And that matters more than anything.