A fire crew from Chicago was sent to an apartment building to fight a fire when they were treated to something extraordinary.
A cat came out of nowhere as a fifth-floor flat was engulfed in flames and smoke billowed from one of the windows.
The black cat leaped from the fifth-floor window after taking a few steps back to survey the scene.
Onlookers couldn’t believe what they were seeing and held their breath as they waited for the reveal of the scene.
The cat barely avoided collapsing into a concrete wall, but she managed to land on her feet. She bounced on the grass before walking away uninjured from the scene.
The Chicago Fire Department posted the amazing video on Twitter with the comment, “Nine lives for a cat that jumped from a fire at 65th and Lowe.”
“The cat ran under my car and hid until she felt better after a couple of minutes,” said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford. Then he came out and attempted to climb the wall to go back in.”
Fortunately, the fire was confined to a single unit and extinguished quickly. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness. The cat’s owner is being searched by firefighter rescuers.
The righting reflex in cats allows them to land on their feet after falling. As explained by Animal Planet, “his body automatically corrects itself so that by the time he reaches the ground, his feet are in the best position to strike first.”
Although it may seem strange, cats that fall from higher heights suffer less damage.
When veterinarians treated the broken legs and other injuries sustained by cats who survived falls from high-rise apartments, they noticed that cats who fell from greater heights, such as more than five stories, often suffered less severe injuries than cats who fell from only a few floors because the longer drop gave their bodies more time to right themselves.
In the video below, you can see how the cat made a life-threatening jump and survived!
