Cat lucky to be alive after found dumped and buried in snow outside Whiteside County animal shelter

A cat is lucky to be alive after being dumped outside a Whiteside County animal shelter Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Inside Happy Tails Humane Society, there are plenty of animals with miraculous stories of beating the odds. 

Wednesday morning was another.

Happy Tails Director of Shelter Medicine Donald Czyzyk said, “Buried alive basically.”

Employees at the Happy Tails Humane Society named the cat Winter.

Winter is doing well after being left in freezing conditions and buries in the snow.

Donald Czyzyk now has the cat safe and warm.
His keen eye what most would miss buried in the ditch across from the shelter. 

He told Local 4 News it’s illegal in the state of Illinois to dump animals, but nevertheless, Happy Tails staff are often on the lookout for animals abandoned along the road out of range from the shelter’s security cameras.

“Most of the time, people are afraid to come up to our facility because we are heavily secured with ADT cameras and so a lot of people are afraid to come up to the property when they’re dumping an animal,” said Czyzyk. “So they’ll dump them off on the side of the road instead.”

He added, “As I was driving down the road, noticed a little pink piece sticking out of the snow bank.”

After retrieving the carrier from underneath the snow bank, the director of shelter medicine told Local 4 News at first he couldn’t even tell if there was an animal inside.

The carrier was so packed full of snow; it required a close look just to see the faintest details of Winter.

Czyzyk said, “Barely seen the ears and the eyes of the cat.”

It also appears that might of been part of the struggling Winter faced while outside.

“The plow came by,  snagged the carrier just right and actually threw it across the road. It was found across the road from our mailbox and when the plow came back by, he must of completely submerged the carrier in the snow,” said Czyzyk.

In his ten years at the shelter, Winter’s story is among the worst he’s seen said Czyzyk.

He told Local 4 News, “I think Winter’s probably the hardest case I’ve ever had. I had tears in my eyes for about an hour this morning.”

He said Winter is doing well but was diagnosed with a skin disease.

Right now, they’re watching the cat, making sure there’s no additional health concerns or frostbite to worry about.

“We did find that she had flea allergy dermatitis and she does have fleas. We’re wondering if someone dumped her because they didn’t want to spend the money on the vet care to treat the fleas, which we actually do here at low cost, so it would have been inexpensive too for the family to treat the animal,” he said. 

And it’s not the first cat dumped this week. 

Czyzyk said, “Just Saturday, there was a cat not in a carrier. Somebody dumped it, and it was frozen to the ground at the mailbox base.”

While that cat, named Luna and Winter might prove the proverb nine lives, these incidents of pet dumping don’t always have happy endings.

Czyzyk said, “It happens every single year. Last year, unfortunately, a cat passed away after being frozen to the fence out front.”

With each case, Czyzyk said it’s not so much that the animal was dumped, but it had to suffer. 

Czyzyk hopes Winter will be a wake-up call for the community. 

Czyzyk said, “I could never imagine being under a snowbank, completely collapsed on you.”

The Humane Society started collecting donations on Facebook as a reward to help bring the person who dumped winter to justice.

“We would like the person to be prosecuted and set an example that we are not going to stand for this in Whiteside County,” said Czyzyk. “We’ve worked very hard in 2018 to make Whiteside County a humane county, working with the sheriff’s department, animal control. Stopping hoarding situations and puppy mills.”

My Heart Breaks for this little snow angle who was dumped at the end of our drive overnight and the plows buried him! He…Posted by Happy Tails on Wednesday, January 23, 2019

By Wednesday night they’ve raised about $1,000.

If no arrests are made, the money will help the Humane Society save other animals in the community. 

Happy Tails expects to have Winter available for adoption in a week.

Czyzyk said if people want to re-home a pet, there’s a safe and simple process they can complete on their website. 

“People, if they can hang on to the animal they can post the animal online. It will upload to 10,000 Facebook followers. Their [pet’s] picture, their profile, all that. We have a huge success rate with that, and exotic animals being uploaded as well,” said Czykyz. 

“As far as the shelter goes, we actually do intake off of that website as well. We look at profiles daily and say ‘yep, this animal, if they can’t hang on to it anymore, bring it on in,” he added.

He told Local 4 News they asked for an intake fee if people can afford it. 

Happy Tails does have advice for keeping pet’s safe in this weather.

First is to make sure trips outside are as short as possible.

For outdoor pets, make sure they have food and unfrozen water.

Also that there’s a shelter for them to help them get out of the elements.

Happy Tails does offer free feral cat houses in Whiteside County along with food.

They said, especially if an animal is wet outside in these conditions, it can only take a few minutes for it to die. 

Visit the SPCA for more tips.