She couldn’t move. Her body was so cold the thermometer couldn’t read it.
On January 31, 2019, Fluffy’s owners came home early in Kalispell, Montana, and found something that made their hearts drop. Their 3-year-old outdoor cat was buried in a hard-packed snowbank, completely crusted over with ice and snow. She looked like she was hunting something. Then they realized she wasn’t moving at all.
Temperatures that day were just below freezing, but it had been colder the night before. They rushed her to the Animal Clinic of Kalispell. She was unresponsive. Her body temperature didn’t register on the clinic’s thermometer. Normal for a cat is 100 to 102 degrees. Fluffy was below 90.
Staff moved fast. They used warm water, hair dryers, heated towels that were swapped out constantly, and finally placed her in a heated kennel. They couldn’t even get an IV in at first because her veins were too cold.
Then, after about an hour, Fluffy started growling. Dr. Jevon Clark knew right then she’d be okay. “These crabby cats are survivors,” he said.
They picked the ice off her coat piece by piece. She started moving. That same night, she went home.
No one knows exactly how long she was out there or what happened. Dr. Clark suspects something traumatic occurred—maybe something fell on her, or she was chased and injured. Whatever it was, she couldn’t make it back to her usual hiding spots.
Fluffy had always lived outside. She came with the house when her owners moved in a couple years earlier. But after this, they decided to keep her indoors for good.
She still has eight lives left. And now she’ll spend them somewhere warm.