A school bus driver let a child off to save a kitten. Calls to reinstate her are going national.

Thirty minutes after Taffy Thomas’ 10-year-old son Alex got on the school bus, she got a call from the driver.

“We found a cat in the middle of the road, and Alex said that you would take care of it,” Thomas recalled the driver telling her on Sept. 30.

Cynthia Morgan dropped Alex and his classmates off at North Harford Elementary School then circled back to his home to give his mom the black and blotchy-orange kitten, Thomas said.

The thought of her son in the middle of the road didn’t occur to her, Thomas said, until she received a text from Morgan saying she was suspended for a few days.

“It didn’t even enter my mind that he would have been in any kind of danger because she never would have allowed that,” Thomas said.

Since then, the community has rallied around Morgan. A petition that says Morgan lost her job over the kitten rescue has garnered more than 11,000 signatures and attracted national media coverage from outlets like People magazine. Even the advocacy organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has weighed in.

“We really saw an act of kindness and empathy that really shouldn’t be punished or discouraged,” Colin Henstock, PETA’s associate director, said in an interview. “We hope that our outreach to the school board will help Ms. Morgan be reinstated and that students be sent the right message about helping others in need.”