Staff members at the Kabul Small Animal Rescue are working to put together travel crates so the organization’s dogs and cats can safely be evacuated out of Afghanistan.

Kabul Small Animal Rescue

The staff at the Kabul Small Animal Rescue has been working around the clock to pull off what feels like the impossible.

The mission? Fundraise at least $1.5 million for a cargo plane that can airlift more than 200 dogs and cats, the rescue organization’s staff, and their families out of the capital safely — all in less than a week and while the Taliban are breathing down their necks.

The group is rushing to beat the Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. If the staff is still on the ground when that deadline passes, “all bets are off,” Charlotte Maxwell-Jones, the American director and founder of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue,