Fluffy the Frozen Cat

Submission 15,440

Part of a series on Cats. [View Related Entries]

About

Fluffy the Frozen Cat refers to a viral news story about a cat, Fluffy, who was found encased in three feet of snow. The cat, who was essentially frozen alive, was later revived by local veterinarians, raising her temperature from below 90 degrees to 100-102 degrees, the normal range for a cat.

Origin

On February 5th, 2019, the Animal Clinic of Kalispell posted a photograph of the cat on Facebook. ^[1] The photograph received more than 425 reactions, 45 comments and 15 shares in less than one week (shown below).

Spread

That day, the clinic posted more pictures of the cat. The first, a picture of the cat being dried off, received more than 350 reactions and 10 comments (shown below, left).^[2] A followup picture, one of the cat standing dry, received more than 745 reactions, 100 comments and 15 shares (shown below, right).^[3]

According to Andrea Dutter, executive director of the clinic, "They happened to be able to be off work early last Thursday and came home to find Fluffy in the snow We speculate that Fluffy had endured some kind of trauma that prevented her from getting to her safe place."^[4]

That day, they posted,^[6] "Amazing success and survival story from this week. Some clients found their injured cat buried in snow. They brought her to us essentially frozen and unresponsive. Her temperature was very low but after many hours she recovered and is now completely normal. Fluffy is amazing!" The post received more than 4,000 reactions, 520 comments and 3,200 shares.

On February 7th, Twitter ^[5] user @MikeBlakey13 tweeted a video about the story. They captioned the post, "This story has a happy ending. A family in Montana found their cat, Fluffy, frozen and encased in 3 inches of snow. Vets at a Kalispell clinic raised her body temperature using warm water, blow dryers, towels, and intravenous fluids. After 7 hours Fluffy was back to normal." The post received more than 2,600 retweets, 9,200 likes and 415,000 views (shown below).

Several media outlets covered the story, including CNN,^[7] ABC,^[8] CBS,^[9] Time^[10] and more. Twitter^[11] published a Moments page about the cat's recovery.

Marc Elie, a veterinary internist at BluePearl Pet Hospital in Southfield, Michigan, explained how the cat survived.^[10] He said, "What happens is that the central nervous system starts to shut down, putting the animal in what’s like an induced coma. As long as they don’t get extremity injuries, specifically frostbite, they can survive.” According to Elie, treatment includes, “slowly re-warming the animals --slowly is important--with warm water, heating pads, and monitoring their temperature and starting fluids if they can."