Eleven cats are recovering in a London, U.K., animal shelter after they were rescued from cardboard boxes.
The cats were found on Jan. 11 in an alleyway close to a busy road in east London. They were left next to a trash can in cardboard boxes that were taped shut.
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Celia Hammond Animal Trust, a London-based animal advocacy group, explained in a Facebook post that a woman heard the cats meowing and went to investigate.
“We can only assume the intention was for them to die, as surely everybody knows animals need to be able to breathe to survive,” the post read. “The boxes cannot have been there very long as without oxygen, our vets estimate they probably wouldn’t have lived more than an hour or two.”
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The organization went to rescue the cats, two adult females and nine adolescents, and filmed the boxes being opened. The video was posted on Facebook on Tuesday and has more than four million views.
It explained that the cats are all fairly young, extremely underweight and “covered in fleas.”
While the end goal is to find homes for the felines, the Facebook post explained the priority, for now, is rehabilitate them so they are strong enough to be neutered, vaccinated and micro-chipped.
“The cats are doing well. Once they had recovered from their shock, they have turned out to be friendly and like being stroked,” the shelter said in a follow-up post on Friday.
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The group is also trying to figure out who left the cats in the alleyway, and is appealing to the public for information. It noted that the adult cats do not seem old enough to be mothers, which means there may be more cats owned by the person who abandoned them.