The young feline had been poisoned with anti-freeze, vet hoping to save its life put it on a vodka drip

Oct 23, 2014 19:57 GMT  ·  By

As surprising as this may sound, a 4-month-old kitten now owes its life (well, at least one of its 9 lives) to half a liter of vodka that not only got it totally drunk, but also helped it get back on its paws after being poisoned with anti-freeze.

Thus, the vet who treated this young feline says that, had it not been for the spirit, Missey would have surely burned through all its lives in just a matter of hours. That's right, it's all hail vodka as far as this cat is concerned.

How Missey was poisoned

It is understood that the 4-month-old kitten did not ingest the anti-freeze on its own accord. On the contrary, it was poisoned by a bunch of folks who chanced to catch it wandering around its owners' home in the town of Redcar in the UK.

Needless to say, the people who poisoned Missey with anti-freeze did so because they were looking to have some fun. How and why anyone could ever think that poisoning a cat counts as having fun remains a mystery.

The cat's owners, 47-year-old Paul Stephenson and daughter Sara, say that the 4-month-old feline started feeling ill the night after the incident. By morning, its condition had taken a turn for the worse, and so they decided to take Missey to see a vet.

Using vodka to treat anti-freeze poisoning

According to Huffington Post, the cat was treated by a vet named Andrew Miller, who did not take very long to figure out what was wrong with the feline and suggested that it be put on a vodka drip.

“It is the ethanol used in this particular spirit which helps,” the vet explained his decision to use vodka to treat the kitten. “Anti-freeze is extremely toxic to animal's kidneys, and we specifically use vodka because the ethanol in it neutralizes the substance in the poison,” he added.

The kitten had to stay on the vodka drip for two days, just to make sure that there weren't any traces of anti-freeze left in its body. During this time, it went through nearly half a liter of this spirit.

The side effects

Not at all surprisingly, it appears that, during the time that it received treatment for anti-freeze poisoning, Missey was pretty much wasted. Otherwise put, the kitten was so drunk that even the simplest of tasks seemed like an ordeal.

“Missey was totally blind drunk. She was trying to get up, but toppled over. Her eyes were out of focus and when we took her home in a carry basket, her mouth was pressed up against the wire so it looked as though she had her teeth bared.”

“At one point she was lying down trying to swipe at a pen and she just kept missing it, she was that out of it. It was totally mad,” owner Sara told the press in a recent interview.

On the bright side, it appears that the treatment worked wonders and that the vodka really did help the kitten get rid of all the anti-freeze in its body. According to vet Andrew Miller, Missey is sure to soon make a full recovery.