Cat in Southern China survived ten story fall but left paralyzed

A cat named Hei Hudie (Black Butterfly) underwent four surgeries over five months after he feel ten stories from a high rise building.

The story unfolded in the southwest of China in Chongqing municipality. The photo tells us he survived but was severely injured. Both hind legs are paralyzed.

They built one of those classic hind leg wheelchairs. We see them a lot in America but this is the first time I have seen a cat in China using one.

This is a nice and, I feel, a rather unusual story because I tend to associate southern China with the cat meat industry and ill-treatment of cats. This is the opposite except for what I’ll presume was carelessness in allowing this cat to be placed in a position of danger before falling. Although we don’t know what happened so it could have been an innocent accident.

The cat as we can see is a calico (tortie-and-white). Therefore she is female. We know that cats falling from a great height reach a relatively low terminal velocity which saves their lives. Falling from a lesser height can result in more severe injuries because the breaking effect of fanning out the body is less effective. Also we all know that cats fall on their feet using the self-righting mechanism.

Update: There is a link to a video on the comments. I can’t watch it. No way. But a kind person has emailed me and mentioned this:

“The way they’ve tried to actually save the cat is awful with a broom and then recording what’s happened when they could have actually left the cat and the cat could have hopped onto the ledge, the least they could have done is gotten someone to go down to catch it or to lay something on the floor.”

So, it seems that there was a careless attempt to save the cat that went wrong and the cat fell.