Members of the Italian coastguard recently rescued a one-month-old kitten off the coast of Sicily and an officer gave the poor drowning animal mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
When a group of children at the port town of Marsala luckily spotted the cat floating in the sea, having apparently breathed its last breath, a patrolling officer dived right in to save him.
Massaging the kitten’s chest, murmuring encouragement and also using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation just as they would on a human, officers managed to bring back some signs of life and eventually a weak meow from the soaking animal.
The animal was seen frantically struggling in a Cambridgeshire river by two passers-by who managed to reach in and pull it to safety.
However, when they hauled it onto the riverbank it was barely breathing so they dialled 999.
A fire crew answered the emergency call and rushed to the scene in Wisbech.
Sara Rolse, who is a veterinary nurse at Best Friends, said at the time: ‘It’s difficult to say how he got into the river, there could be any number of scenarios.
‘He could have jumped over a wall and not anticipated what was behind it or he could have been thrown in by someone, we can’t be sure.
‘It’s worrying that he has not been reported as missing despite having an owner, he clearly had one as he was wearing a collar at the time but there are no details about him and he isn’t micro-chipped.
‘When he came in he was in hypothermic shock from the cold water and had collapsed and was unresponsive with no reflexes.’
