Russia is notoriously cold during the winter time. Some areas in Russia face temperatures as low as -40 degrees Celsius (or -40 degrees Fahrenheit), but it can get colder than that.
The coldest inhabited place on Earth is a tiny village called Oymyakon in Yakutia, Russia. The village is located in the Far East with a population slightly above 500 and holds the record for the lowest temperature ever recorded, registering at −71.2 °C (−96.2 °F) in the year 1924.
But despite Russia’s famously cold temperatures, some of its inhabitants are incredibly warm hearted.
During one of the coldest days of winter, 41-year-old Sergey Baranov, a knife maker from the Urals city of Zlatoust, along with his 36-year-old wife Yelena, noticed a cat underneath their car.
The cat’s fur was covered in frost as he trembled from the cold.
“It must have got under the car in the evening, looking for a warm place, fell asleep and all its paws got frozen solid by the morning,” said Sergey.
Seeing the distressed animal, the pair acted quickly. Sergey stayed with the cat while Yelena ran to and from the house, refilling buckets of warm water to thaw the snow.
After seven douses of warm water, Semyon the cat’s paws were finally freed.
The front paws were freed first, needing only two buckets of water. But the back paws required more effort as they had sunk 6 centimeters into the thick frozen snow. To free them, five more buckets of water were used.
Altogether, the cat rescue took seven and a half minutes. Afterwards, the couple wrapped the shivering kitty in a thick blanket to warm him up.
“It’s now minus 35C,” Sergey said during his recording. “You see how cold is our winter if even cats get frozen outside.”
Semyon was having difficulty moving his paws, so Yelena called a vet she knew to perform an evaluation. Sergey posted the update to his social media.
“We called a vet who came right away and he did an anti-inflammatory shot. By the end of the day, the cat had started to walk. It looks very young, only seven to nine months. Three days later, after making sure the cat was all right, I posted an announcement on my page and a girl from our city said she wanted to pick it up. The cat has now lived at her house for a week and she says he seems to be fine. He runs and jumps around.”
Sergey and Yelena’s generous gesture did not go unnoticed by viewers of the viral video.
Indeed, Semyon was very lucky, but not all cats are. The video serves as a cautionary reminder for those who live in areas with harsh winters.
In Sergey’s words: “Always check what’s under your cars before you start the engine!”
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