The sound was easy to mistake for another piece of machinery. On a busy construction site in Leavittsburg, Ohio, Chase Guello heard something faint coming from inside an excavator, the kind of strange noise that could easily disappear beneath the sounds of engines, steel, and equipment moving across the site. Then he heard it again. This time, something about the sound seemed different. It did not have the steady rhythm of machinery. It sounded frightened, and it was coming from somewhere deep inside the massive excavator.
Guello, an operating supervisor at RiverReach Construction, followed the sound and began looking into the machine’s turret. Hidden behind steel and hydraulic lines was a tiny orange kitten, so small that nobody knew how long she had been trapped there or how she had managed to survive. Reaching her would require taking part of the heavy equipment apart, turning an ordinary workday into an unexpected rescue. What happened next would give the kitten a name, a foster home, a permanent place to live, and an unlikely connection to the construction crew that first heard her cries.
A Cry Came From Inside The Machine
Guello initially suspected the noise might be the faint beeping that surrounds heavy equipment on a construction site. With machinery operating throughout the area, another mechanical sound would hardly have seemed unusual. But the noise continued, and when he paid closer attention, he realized that it did not sound like something produced by the excavator at all. It was the cry of a living creature, and it was coming from somewhere workers could not immediately reach.
He looked beneath the excavator and discovered that the sound was coming from deep inside the machine’s turret. The kitten had somehow found her way into a confined space behind steel components and hydraulic lines, leaving her effectively trapped. The only practical way to reach her was to remove the bottom skid plate, a heavy section designed to protect the underside of the excavator from damage while the machine is working.
Removing the plate did not immediately solve the problem. Guello managed to get the bolts out, but the steel panel remained stuck. When it finally gave way, the kitten came down with it and landed in the dirt beneath the machine. She was orange, filthy, and remarkably small. One account estimated that she was only about two weeks old, which made the discovery even more striking because a kitten that young would have been almost completely dependent on care from an adult.
“Rescue mission for the day,” Guello said while his crew recorded the moment. He then looked down at the tiny animal and added, “Normally, it’s a piece of equipment. Right now, it’s this little guy. There’s a cat.” For a crew accustomed to dealing with heavy machinery and demanding outdoor work, the kitten had suddenly become the most important thing on the job site.
A Construction Crew Became Her First Safe Place
Nobody knew exactly how the kitten had ended up inside the excavator. Guello believed she might have been there for a day or two, although there was no way to establish precisely how long she had survived in the confined space. What the workers did know was that she was far too young and vulnerable to remain anywhere near an active construction site, where heavy equipment was constantly moving and there was no way to provide the care she needed.
The crew brought her into their office trailer for the rest of the day, giving her a quiet place away from the machinery and activity outside. The same room that normally held paperwork, planning discussions, and the everyday business of a construction company became a temporary shelter for a kitten who had appeared from inside a machine. It was a small change to the crew’s routine, but for the animal they had just rescued, it meant the difference between remaining exposed and finally being somewhere safe.
“Once we got her out, we took her into our office trailer for the rest of the day,” Guello later said. The decision was simple, but it revealed something about the people involved. They had a job to complete, machinery to operate, and a project that required their attention, yet a helpless animal had entered their day and immediately changed their priorities.
The kitten eventually went to a rescue in Akron before moving into a foster home with a friend of Guello’s mother. She needed specialized attention because of her young age, and her foster caregiver already had extensive experience raising kittens. For about two weeks, Sue remained in that temporary home, gaining strength and getting the care she needed before she could return to the people who had first found her.
Her New Name Came From The Excavator
The kitten did not remain nameless for long. Once the crew had rescued her, they wanted a name that would always connect her to the unusual circumstances of her arrival. Since the animal had been discovered inside a Komatsu excavator, they chose Komatsu as her name. Before long, it was shortened to Sue, giving the tiny kitten an identity that carried a piece of the place where her life had suddenly changed.
There was also a small confusion about whether Sue was male or female. During the original rescue, Guello referred to the kitten as a he, while later accounts identified her as a female. The discrepancy is understandable given the circumstances. The workers were focused on getting a tiny animal out of a complicated piece of heavy machinery, and the immediate priority was keeping her safe rather than stopping to determine every detail about her.
What mattered was that Sue had survived an ordeal that could easily have ended differently. She had somehow made her way into a machine, remained hidden from the people working around it, and then made enough noise for someone to realize that something was wrong. Guello’s decision to investigate gave the crew the opportunity to find her before the situation became more serious.
For the workers, the kitten soon became more than an unusual interruption to the workday. She became part of the story of the project itself. The people who had first heard her cries now knew her name, watched her receive care, and waited for the day when she could return to a permanent home.
The Kitten Got Her Own Construction Gear
The rescue video eventually reached millions of viewers, and the story took another unexpected turn when Komatsu, the company that makes the excavator, learned about Sue. The company contacted the Ohio construction business, creating a connection between the kitten and the machine that had unexpectedly become part of her story.
Sue soon received a miniature version of the equipment associated with her new surroundings. She was given a reflective safety vest sized for her and a small hard hat with openings for her ears. The outfit was clearly playful, but it also became a fitting symbol of the strange path that had brought her into the lives of the construction workers.
The crew later shared photographs of Sue wearing the vest and hard hat, joking that she was ready for the job site. For anyone seeing the photographs without knowing the story, the image was simply an unusual and amusing sight: a tiny orange kitten dressed like a construction worker. Knowing that the kitten had actually been rescued from inside an excavator made the picture considerably more meaningful.
The gear could never have protected Sue when she was trapped inside the machine. What protected her was a person who heard something unusual, took the time to investigate, and refused to assume that the sound was just another part of the machinery. The hard hat became a playful souvenir of that moment, but the rescue itself came from something much simpler: attention.
A Mechanic Gave Sue A Permanent Home
Sue’s next chapter took her away from the temporary foster home and into the care of Jared, RiverReach’s shop mechanic. Jared grew up on a farm and had spent much of his life raising animals, making his home a natural place for a kitten that had already developed an unusual connection to a working environment. Instead of becoming a short-lived visitor at the construction site, Sue would have a permanent home with someone from the crew.
“Once she’s of age, she’ll be traveling to and from work with him, and she’ll eventually become a shop cat under his supervision,” Guello said. The plan means Sue will eventually be able to accompany Jared to work and become part of the daily life of the shop. The kitten that once hid inside an excavator could one day spend her mornings arriving at the same workplace where her rescue story began.
Guello seemed surprised by the amount of attention the rescue received. “I’m far from a celebrity,” he said. “Just happened to rescue a little kitty on a construction site.” There was no grand plan behind the moment and no expectation that millions of people would become interested in what happened. A worker heard a strange sound, found an animal in trouble, and helped.
Guello also recognized why the story connected with so many people. Blue-collar workers can sometimes be portrayed as tough, distant, or uninterested in sentiment, yet the rescue offered a very different picture. The crew did not need to make a spectacle of their compassion. They simply saw a vulnerable animal that needed help and responded to it.
The Work Around Sue Was About Restoring A River
Sue was discovered while RiverReach Construction was carrying out work on the Mahoning River. The company specializes in river and stream restoration, dam removal, dredging, wetland mitigation, and environmental remediation. Its work involves changing damaged or obstructed landscapes while taking care to protect the natural systems surrounding them.
The crew had been working on the Leavittsburg Dam, which was removed from the river earlier in the year. The process involved carefully notching the concrete down in stages so that sediment accumulated behind the dam would not suddenly surge downstream. Instead of simply removing the structure as quickly as possible, the work required controlled changes designed to limit disruption to the river.
That kind of work demands patience and close attention. A river is a living system, and changing one part of it can affect everything around it. The goal is to remove an obstacle while giving the surrounding environment room to adjust.
In an unexpected way, Sue’s rescue reflected that same attention to what can easily go unnoticed. The crew was already working carefully around a river and its surroundings when someone heard a sound that could have been dismissed as machinery. Instead, Guello stopped to find out where it was coming from, and a tiny life was discovered inside several tons of equipment.
Five Dams Still Remain On The Mahoning
Sue now has a name, a permanent home, and a future with the mechanic who plans to bring her to work once she is old enough. The river restoration project continues beyond the location where she was found, with five dams still standing along the Mahoning River: Main Street, Girard, Crescent Street, Marshall Street, and Center Street.
For the people involved, the kitten will likely remain one of the most memorable moments connected to the project. They arrived to work on a river and its infrastructure, only to discover a tiny animal hidden inside their equipment. The rescue interrupted the ordinary rhythm of the job, but it also created a story that the crew could carry with them long after the excavator was put back together.
Sue’s journey began in a place that could have been frightening and dangerous, yet it eventually led her to people who noticed her, cared for her, and gave her a permanent home. Her story is a quiet example of how compassion often begins before anyone has decided what to do next. Someone simply has to notice that something is there.
The next time an unfamiliar sound breaks through the noise of an ordinary day, it may be worth listening a little more carefully. For one tiny kitten in Ohio, someone did, and that changed everything