She was the purr-fect one for the job.
An adorable two-week-old kitten went viral for getting rescued and then adopted by Ohio construction workers who fitted her with a tiny safety vest and hard hat with holes for her ears.
In a series of Instagram videos, that racked up over 11 million combined views, RiverReach Construction chronicles the fur baby’s journey, which started back in July.
When operating supervisor Chase Guello was checking on his equipment before heading out to work on a dam, he heard the feline — who was trapped in their Komatsu excavator — crying for help.
“Rescue mission for the day,” Guello said in the first clip.
“Normally, it’s a piece of equipment. Right now, it’s this little guy. There’s a cat.”
Guello looked into the Komatsu’s engine and saw the creature walking inside the turret, so laid underneath it and unscrewed its 100-pound skid plates, and then kicked them out — and the orange cat, who they named Sue, fell to the ground.
“She was the size of my fist,” Guello told ABC News.
The Barberton-based company continued to update its concerned followers on their new four-legged friend’s status.
“We ended up taking the kitten home. We looked around and couldn’t find its mother. There were no signs of any other cats. I don’t know how she got there,” Guello explained.
His mother’s friend, who works at a pet rescue, fostered Sue for a few weeks until she was given to the company’s shop mechanic, who has experience taking care of animals after growing up on a farm.
“The kitten will go back and forth from work to his house with them every day until she’s old enough to be a shop cat,” he added.
Two days after her rescue, Guello posted a video of then-unnamed Sue drinking milk from a bottle, while announcing the company was taking a poll on what her name should be.
After a week, he revealed the winning name of “Komatsu,” the brand of the vehicle she got stuck in, saying, “We’re gonna call her Sue for short.”
The brand Komatsu even sent Sue merch, including “the world’s smallest safety vest” and “a little baby hard hat,” which Guello unboxed in another Instagram video.
He also filmed the moment he got the kitten back from her foster mom, when he said, “I am not a cat person, but this is the cutest cat I’ve ever seen,” while holding Sue, who was wrapped in a blanket.
“I think it’s such a feel-good story that, you know, traditionally, like blue collar — we’re rough around the edges, we don’t have feelings,” Guello told Fox8.
“But we still care for such a little kitten.”
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