Tiny Kitten Goes From Excavator Rescue to Construction Company Mascot
A teeny-tiny kitten goes from an excavator rescue to a construction company mascot. And as the owner of three ginger cats—one of them a foster fail—I was probably doomed the second I saw itty bitty Sue wearing a reflective construction vest and a hard hat with little holes for her ears.
But it’s the hands that get me. Big, scraped-up construction hands meant for operating excavators and moving earth, suddenly cupped around a two-week-old kitten no bigger than a fist.
The crew at River Reach Construction was preparing equipment for work on an Ohio dam when operating supervisor Chase Guello and his brother Clay heard something coming from inside a Komatsu excavator: a desperate meow.
Chase listened closer and discovered a tiny kitten trapped deep inside the base turret of the massive machine.
“I start listening around and I’m looking down and there’s a kitten all the way down, way in the base turret of this machine,” Chase recalled.
Construction Crew Hears a Kitten Inside an Excavator
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Getting her out wasn’t simple. Chase crawled underneath the excavator and removed skid plates weighing roughly 100 pounds each. Then, from somewhere inside all that steel, grease, and machinery, out came one very tiny, very opinionated ginger kitten. She came “screaming into their lives.”
And really, is there any other way for a ginger cat to arrive? The crew couldn’t locate her mother, so they gave the hungry kitten milk and eventually placed her with an experienced foster family. They also gave her a name: Sue, short for Komatsu, the brand of excavator where she was found.
Then the internet fell in love. Videos of Sue’s rescue drew millions of views, and Komatsu North America even sent their tiniest new construction worker their own reflective vest and hard hat.
Tiny Kitten Sue Wins Over the Construction Crew
“I was smiling ear to ear,” Chase said when he saw her dressed for the job.
After several weeks in foster care, Sue found her forever home with River Reach Construction shop mechanic Jared and his two boys. She still comes into the office on Fridays, making her something of an unofficial shop cat and construction mascot. In the meantime, she’s practicing her “apex predator” skills on toys and anything that moves.
But what makes Sue’s story so sweet is how, on a worksite built for heavy machinery and hard labor, a handful of men stopped everything because they heard the smallest cry.
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“The righteous care for the needs of their animals.” Proverbs 12:10
WATCH: Tiny Kitten Goes From Excavator Rescue to Construction Company Mascot
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h/t: Gulf Coast News Now
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Good Morning America
Originally published September 24, 2026.
