'Crabby cats are survivors': Frozen cat revived after found covered in ice
There's a saying in medicine: You're not dead until you're warm and dead. Turns out it applies to cats, too.
As the polar vortex raged across the Midwest of the US, temperatures dropped below minus 17 degrees celsius in Kalispell, Montana on the morning of January 31. A cat named Fluffy - a usually confident outdoor cat - got into some trouble.
Fluffy's owners, who did not want to be named, came home last week to find their cat had been crusted onto a hard-packed snowbank, as though she'd been sitting in one spot for a long time while the blowing snow drifted up around her. It wasn't clear how long Fluffy had been there.
They scooped her up and immediately drove her to the vet, which is probably what saved her life.
"She was frozen," said executive director of the Animal Clinic of Kalispell Andrea Dutter. Her body temperature was below what the clinic's thermometers could read, minus 32 degrees. A cat's normal internal body temperature is 38 degrees.
"We immediately began to warm her up," Dutter said.
Staff warmed the cat using towels, cage warmers and intravenous fluids. Fluffy is normally a little crabby, so when she began growling after about an hour, the vets knew she would be fine.
Fluffy is an indoor-outdoor cat that knows her surroundings well, Dutter said. Once she was thawed, the veterinarians discovered that the cat had suffered from an injury that prevented her from getting back to the house.
After the vets picked the ice off Fluffy's coat and she started moving around, they sent her to an emergency clinic to help raise her body temperature. The cat was discharged to her owners the same night, and when vets checked on her a few days later, she appeared to be back to normal.
"These crabby cats are survivors," said Dr Jevon Clark of the Animal Clinic of Kalispell.
Dr Clark said Fluffy's owners didn't do anything wrong.
Her owners plan to keep Fluffy inside for now. "We'll see if Fluffy likes that or Fluffy doesn't like that," Dr Clark said.
The Washington Post with AAP