It was late evening when I saw her first. In the near darkness, as the street lamps were off, her black fur blended into the night, and all I could see was her small shape hesitantly moving towards me.

“Hey, do you want something to eat?” I asked. A minute late I dumped some cat food in front of her. “Here, have something to eat. There is water over there too, I gestured to the empty ice-cream container I had recently filled with water.

But the cat sniffed the food and backed off. Not hungry, I thought. Sometimes street cats are not hungry, strange as it may seem.

Next morning, the kitten crossed the street and entered our garden, or rather the overgrown patch of ground behind the neighbouring empty plot that bordered our apartment’s building. Nobody ever comes by to trim the bushes or cut the grass, so it is now home to a dozen of cats that I feed daily. She was sitting in the middle of the driveway, a long concrete path wide enough for a single car to drive down. I gasped when I saw her. She cried, walked towards me and cried again.

“Please, help me,” the little creature seemed to be saying.

Her matted thin fur was prickled with pricks and grasses that she wasn’t able to clean off. And then I noticed her jaw, which drooped slightly to the right, teeth jutting out at an angle and there was a hole where skin and fur should have been. She seemed to cry again, her jaw aching as she opened the mouth to get the weak sound out.

I rushed to the kitten. My first urge was to pick her up and rush her to the vet, but then I waved off the idea. I lost a number of cats teetering on the edge of death, and I didn’t know if I could do it again. After the last time, I told myself, “This is nature. This is how the world works. You can’t save them all.”

Upset, I went inside to bring some water and food for the cat.

The next morning, there she was again, waiting for me. “Please,” she seemed to be saying.

My friend Naz, who is much more knowledgeable about cats than I, came by and told me that we had to take the kitten to a vet. There was no way she could make it otherwise.

Fortunately, an X-ray showed that the kitten’s jaw was not broken, and the vet assured us that several doses of antibiotics would clear up the infection that was damaging her body and causing her mouth to fall apart. So we left the kitten at the clinic and crossed our fingers and prayed.

That night, I fretted at home about the kitten, about its owner who dumped the kitten into the street. I cursed every other person who walked by that kitten and refused to help it, who said, “Not me, not today”.

In the morning, I braced myself for the worst. The kitten had probably died during the night, I told myself as I made my way towards the clinic with a heavy heart.

At the vet, they brought the kitten to me and I saw her eyes for the first time and they were beautiful, big black eyes. And she was standing — something she hadn’t been able to do the day before. And the injury in her jaw looked a little less red and raw.

Though she was not out of the woods yet, she was very much on the way to recovery! How much stronger her voice, her legs, how much clearer her eyes were!

I stretched my hand and the kitten came forward, head bowed low so I could pet her. I bent my head toward her and spoke softly. “You did the right thing by finding me. I’m sorry I hesitated. But I’m going to take care of you now.”

The kitten nestled her head into my cupped hand and purred.

After about two weeks of care, medication, and plenty of water and food, the kitten, whom I have named Lucky, was doing much better.

Thanks to one of my friends, she has found a permanent home and people who love and care for her. Someone wise said that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection from cruelty.

The words of Dr Louis J. Camuti, a world-famous veterinarian, are more than appropriate here: “Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground on which all of us may meet. By loving and understanding animals, perhaps we, humans, shall come to understand each other.”