A tiny kitten dumped into a city trash bin and buried under a mound of garbage is safe and sound, thanks to staff of a nearby veterinary clinic who came to the rescue.

The month-old kitten, which they’ve named Hope, is now scampering around St. Clair Veterinary Facilities, oblivious to her close call.

“It was named Hope because it’s a lovely story of salvation, really,” clinic administrator James Duhaime said. “Suffering such a cruel fate by someone who would throw it out was a death sentence.”

Duhaime said Hope could never have crawled out of the bin on her own.

Staff were alerted to Hope’s predicament on Wednesday afternoon when a frantic young couple rushed in to the clinic, near St. Clair Ave. W. and Oakwood Ave., to report hearing a kitten’s cries coming from the garbage bin metres away. They immediately sprang into action.

Veterinary technician Pilar Cardone moved as much garbage as she could, hampered by the bin’s small opening.

It wasn’t until a passerby forced the bin open that they saw the kitten wedged under a foot of trash and beer bottles.

Taking the kitten into her hand, Cardone immediately ran to the clinic’s treatment area where she massaged and warmed the coffee-drenched kitten with a hair dryer. Its body temperature was an abnormally low 32C when it should have been 38 C.

“We checked its heart and it was very strong,” Duhaime said. “Had it been there for much longer, it could not have survived.”

Hope is now going house-to-house with different clinic staff who volunteered to feed and care for it.

Around a dozen people have offered to adopt it but at one-month old, the veterinarian has pronounced Hope unsuitable for adoption until it reaches the appropriate age.

Satisfied with Hope’s fast recovery, Duhaime remains worried about the other kittens in the litter.

“We cringe at the thought that they’ve deposited others in different garbage bins,” he said. “But our greatest worry is that some of the worst mass murderers in history started with animals and this person is walking around freely.”