Just two weeks prior, Bored Panda wrote about Pixar’s newest short animation ‘Purl’. Well, the famous animation studio is treating us again with another short film – this time, it’s guaranteed to leave you weeping as it’s a story about one unlikely friendship between an abused pit bull and a stray kitten. Kittbull – a production of Pixar’s new SparkShorts program – was directed by Rosana Sullivan and produced by Kathryn Hendrickson and tells a heartwarming story of a rare kinship formed under the saddest circumstances. Get your tissues ready and scroll down below to watch the full animation.

“To be fully honest, it started from a cat video,” – Rosie laughs. “I love watching cat videos in times of stress. And I thought, you know what, I just want to draw a little kitten doing something silly and very very cat-like. At first, I just wanted to draw something that made me feel good and was fun, but it evolved into something more personal to me, eventually, I realized that growing up I was always very sensitive and very shy. And had actually a lot trouble making connections, making friendships. So I related to this kitten because it never really stepped out of its comfort zone to be vulnerable and make a connection. So that’s eventually what the story became,” the director of the short animation recalls.

The story starts off with a stray, big-eyed kitten wandering around a neighborhood to find a refuge in a cardboard box, in a back alley. He meets a pit bull there,

which suffers from abuse from the hands of his stony-hearted owner. In many ways, it seems as if the animation short is trying to showcase the stereotypes that the pit bulls are facing and is trying to break them, showing that these dogs have good hearts, unlike many of their owners.

In the beginning of the animation, the stray black kitten shies away from the dog and shows fear. However, the animation later shows off the bigheartedness of the dog, who saves the cat which was stuck.

The short itself is beautifully drawn, and some of the people who commented below the video, even thought that it reminds them of the Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. The producer of the animation, Kathryn Hendrickson, noted herself that the animation was drawn in 2D which is “different from what Pixar normally does.”

Watch the full video of ‘Kittbull’ here

Naturally, people found it heart-wrenching