14 DAY TRIAL // If it's true what they say that cats have nine lives, this feline that's now grabbing headlines must have surely burned through one of them - if not a couple - when it somehow managed to survive underwater for over an hour.
The cat inadvertently ended up at the bottom of Lake Havasu in Arizona, US, when the boat it was hiding in capsized, filled with water and sunk.
When a salvation crew at long last pulled the boat out of Lake Havasu, the cat crawled out of it. The feline was obviously terrified and quite confused about the entire affair, but other than this, it was very much alive and well.
“We almost always find fish inside of the sunk boats. This is the first time we've had a cat. She was wet, scared, tired, hungry. Everybody freaked out,” explained Jon Zuccala of Dive Time Recovery in an interview, as cited by DM.
No, the cat is not a mermaid in disguise
The cat was discovered by a mechanic who, once the boat was out of the water, got to work tearing it apart to flush out the sand. Apparently, the feline jumped at him just as he was removing a couple of panels close to the engine.
Since the cat didn't come out of the sunken boat in full diving gear, the most likely explanation is that it survived the unexpected trip to the bottom of Lake Havasu inside an air pocket that formed when the vessel was engulfed by water.
Once rescued, the feline was entrusted to the Western Arizona Humane Society. Staff here first named her Lucky and then, after learning more about its story, changed its moniker to River.
The boat's owner, Genaro Rudaldava, insists that River the mermaid-wannabe cat is not his and that he has no idea how it got inside his vessel. He suspects that it crawled and hid inside it while the boat was en route from California to Arizona.
Folks at the Western Arizona Humane Society are now trying to locate River's owner and return the cat to them. If they fail to find the feline's family, River will most likely be put up for adoption.
