A heroic trash collector from Lebanon, PA shared a TikTok after saving three adorable kittens from the back of the truck. It’s both amazing and quite sad that he knew what type of sound to listen for. Luckily, he detected the muted meows from under the garbage before it was too late. (As it turned out, he’d heard it before.)

There are lots of things that get thrown away into the garbage. But you never expect a video of kittens being found in the back of a garbage truck.

Warning: Contains a tiny bit of vulgar language.Video via TikTok/turboterry77

Little Mews Coming From the Back of the Truck

Image screenshots via TikTok/ turboterry77

He Luckily Happened to Be Driving the Truck that Day

It started out as a normal day for Terrance Taylor doing his job collecting trash. Taylor, who works for Weidle Sanitation in Lebanon, PA, was filling in for a co-worker. He was doing a route other than his usual one, while they went through training. At around 8 a.m., he stopped at a house in the Jonestown area.

Then, he heard a high-pitched muffled noise from the back of the truck. And as he was collecting a few bags of trash from a bin, he heard more odd noises. Immediately he started to investigate the noise and saw a bag moving in the back of the truck! As Taylor moved the bag, there was a small wet and dirty kitten meowing back at him.                                                                                                                                                  “I hear this—it’s kind of hard to describe—a high-pitched, muffled noise,” Taylor says in a follow-up TikTok video. “As soon as I seen that, obviously I lift the bag up, and boom, there’s the orange kitten number one,” he says.

The three kittens safe and sound

Kitten or Smoke Detector?

Taylor is known as @turboterry77 on TikTok, and the videos of him rescuing the kittens quickly went viral. As Taylor takes the first kitten and places it in the front seat of the truck, he hears more little mews from the trash. Taylor finds a second kitten. Then a third. He gently placed them both with their sibling in the front seat. Finding three kittens surely kicked him into high alert!

“I put my phone down and I went into high gear,” Taylor says. “Emptying out all the trash that’s in the back of the truck.”

At first, Taylor had thought someone had thrown out a smoke detector, which people do all the time.

“In our business people throw smoke detectors away all the time,” Taylor said.

But after the bag moved, he knew something was up and it wasn’t a smoke detector!

One, Two, Three Kitties Ah, Ah, Ah!

All Three Kittens Saved from the Truck are Doing Fine

Happily, no other kittens were in the back of the trash truck or in any other trash bags. Wanting to make sure they were OK, he took the kittens to his local humane society for a full check-up. The lucky trio are now with a foster mom and were given the names Ginger, Cinnamon, and Clover! How sweet… or spicy their names are!

In their new foster home, they met more kittens about their same age. Here they could grow, learn and play safely.

“I really didn’t realize this video would blow up the way it did,” Taylor noted.

The original TikTok now has over 10.1 million views!

“I shouldn’t get attention like this because it never should have happened.”

We’re so glad to know that these three babies are doing just fine after their ordeal. We hope they’ll get some pretty great homes in the future!

On Independence Day 2022, the TikToker shared that his family has a 4-year-old rescued kitten named, well, what else, Four! Coincidentally, the cat was found on the 4th of July, so the name is purrfect.

Four is “best friends for life” with his daughter and a very lucky cat, indeed. To see more, you can follow him on TikTok.