The second two pics are amazing progress shots
GOD LOVES CATS WE BEEN TOLD YALL
Another case of dedicated veterinary work having to make up for the carelessness of a pet owner. Even if you operate under the assumption that cats should free roam outdoors (which I don’t) the midwest has been absolutely beaten to shit by multiple blizzards and weeks worth of subzero temperatures. I’m talking -55 F in parts of it. Under no circumstances should you leave a pet cat outside in this.
It’s even a long haired cat and it still nearly died. It’s a miracle it didn’t. I see people often snidely remark “what do animals do outside without human help! Oh ho ho!” And the short answer, is they die. Weather like this kills animals in droves. I’m so sick of seeing this story go around like it’s some heartwarming tale because all I can see is someone had a pet and left it outside to die.
I fully second @zooophagous here. It’s wonderful the cat survived, but this is literally a case of animal neglect. Here’s a quote from the repost in The Independent:
“Washington Post reported the painful story of an outdoor cat from Montana named Fluffy who was found covered in dense lumps of ice and snow near her owner’s house. (…) The efforts put in by the vet led to the pet cat returning to a stable condition after which it was found that she had suffered an injury which led to her being unable to return home during the harsh climate.”
This is an outdoor cat who suffered a completely predictable injury due to being allowed to free roam, and who was therefore left stranded in deadly cold weather, unable to seek shelter. It doesn’t sound like her owners were the ones who found her and took her to a vet. This is not okay. If you have even a partially outdoor animal it is your responsibility to make sure it is protected from extreme weather - I can only hope that her people took the effort to look for her before the worst of the vortex hit.
Intentionally left outside in that weather or not, zooophagous is right: this is a cat who was left outside to die in the worst weather possible. Don’t pass this off as a heartwarming story, because responsible pet ownership would have prevented this from ever happening in the first place.
