As storm chaser Ashton Lemley picked his way through a tornado-ravaged Mississippi trailer park, he heard the unmistakable meow of a kitten pierce the predawn darkness.
The homes were flattened just hours earlier as storms spawned at least three tornadoes across the bottom half of Mississippi, injuring a dozen at the trailer park in the rural community of Bogue Chitto.
Lemley had no idea where the kitten was, but he was determined to find it. After a few minutes, the meowing stopped, and Lemley feared the worst.
Then, five minutes later, he heard it again.
“I said, ‘Oh, he’s still alive!’” Lemley told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Lemley quickly dug under insulation from a flattened wall until his flashlight beam found the kitten — wet, scared and hiding between two wooden posts.
Lemley captured the moment on video: “Oh my goodness, I found him!” he says to the camera. “Are you OK? Come here – it’s OK. … We’ll get you cleaned up, baby. Don’t you worry.”
Lemley held the kitten in his arms for a few minutes before handing it off to the commander of the United Cajun Navy, a volunteer disaster-response group, who dried it off and took it to safety. Lemley marveled that it didn’t appear to be injured.
“I’ve been in these situations so many times,” said Lemley, who has been chasing storms since 2010. “I don’t try to get overly emotional. But it is very heartbreaking to see any type of animal or human go through something like that.”
Lemley says there’s already a lot of interest from people who want to adopt the kitten if its owners are not located. Some, he said, want to name it Tornado.
It won’t be coming home with him, though: Lemley is allergic to cats.