Operation: Rescue frozen cat
Published: March 2, 2007
In the old Saturday morning cartoons, it was always a dog — usually a St. Bernard wearing a collar and a keg marked “XXX” — that came to the rescue of hapless humans stuck in giant snowdrifts.
A new version of that tale occurred Jan. 12 when two Oakland girls, armed with extension cords, a blow dryer and scissors, saved a farmyard cat from a prison of ice.
Melissa Nissen, 18 and a senior at Oakland-Craig High School, first wrote of the incident in an Oakland Independent newspaper column she titled, “Case of the Frozen Cat.”
Contacted Monday by a Fremont Tribune reporter, Nissen again explained how she and classmate Tracey Bixler, also 18, performed their rescue mission that frigid morning.
With a day off from school due to a teacher in-service, Nissen first learned of the semi-frozen feline about 10 a.m. when her little brother rushed in from feeding his 4-H calves to announce a cat was stuck in ice near the base of a water tank in the Nissen’s feedlot.
Nissen quickly dressed in overalls and boots and went to see for herself.
Sure enough, there was a “half-sitting, half-lying” cat, Nissen said, with one paw frozen to a pipe overhead and another frozen to a pipe at its side.
She immediately recognized the animal as one of several cats that inhabit the Nissen barn.
“I don’t know how it got stuck there,” she said. “It had a cut on its leg. It might have fallen, trying to get a drink.”
Running for the house for a container of hot water, Nissen dumped it on the cat, only to realize it wasn’t enough and that she’d only made matters worse.
A phone call for help to the nearby Bixler residence resulted in her friend’s arrival — and a new rescue plan.
By 10:30 a.m., the girls trooped into the feedlot, Nissen said, “armed with my mom’s hair dryer, a hammer, a chisel, scissors and a space heater.”
Using extension cords strung from the barn, the girls plugged in the dryer and space heater and went to work, melting the ice and clipping the cat free as they went.
“We blew some fuses,” said Nissen, but after 90 minutes of blow-drying and scissoring — and a final whack with the hammer to free the cat’s tail — the animal came loose from the ice.
Mission completed, the girls collected their gear and retreated to the house where, Nissen said, “We used the space heater on ourselves. We were freezing out there.”
Although initially weakened by the experience, the cat, thereafter called Slick, has now recovered, Nissen said.
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