Do cats get cold in winter? At what temperature can cats live outside: what breeds cannot tolerate cold Extremely negative temperatures

The woolen outfit and natural endurance are reassuring, but looking at your pet meowing under the door, you can’t help but think: “Do cats freeze in winter? Isn’t Vaska’s passion for running through freshly fallen snow dangerous?” You can understand whether a cat is cold only by observation, because our pets differ from each other not only in eye color and taste preferences. How cats tolerate cold and how to determine what the temperature is environment doesn't bring joy to the furry explorer?

Although why furry? There are also hairless cats, smooth, completely devoid of hair. It is clear that such a cat freezes at sub-zero temperatures, quickly releasing the accumulated heat. Letting a sphinx go for a walk in sub-zero temperatures is an unthinkable idea, the consequences of which can be very disastrous. If your pet is accustomed to walking or if a naked cat is cold even in an apartment, you can put sweaters and overalls on it. Of course, the fabric warms worse than a real fur coat, so walks should not be long: your paws are shaking, your ears are cold - go home and warm up. At what temperature does a naked cat freeze? As a rule, sphinxes experience discomfort even at +10°C, not to mention sub-zero temperatures.

But let's get back to the cats sporting luxurious fur coats. The coat can be long or short, but if it is two-layered, with a well-developed undercoat, are cats cold in winter? The undercoat retains heat well and prevents overheating, keeping body temperature within normal limits. However, such protection is not endless: just as a person dressed in a doha, earflaps and felt boots will still freeze after a few hours spent on a frosty street, so a cat, “wrapped” in the best fur, will sooner or later begin to freeze. At what temperature do they freeze? fluffy cats, depends not only on the thermometer readings, but also on the actions of the pet, air humidity and other nuances. “Dry” frost is easier to bear; with low activity you freeze faster; increased humidity means you feel the cold more clearly. Everything is like in humans, with an adjustment for cat endurance.

Cats lacking undercoat freeze faster than Siberians, Coons and representatives of other “furry” breeds. Cold air penetrates the skin faster, heat leaves faster. These cats have cold paws and ears even after short walks at -15 Celsius. But a Siberian, not pampered by life in the arms of a radiator, can walk for a couple of hours without danger to health, even at -30°C.

But how then do street murks survive?

It's terrible, but not everyone survives. Even hereditary stray cats are not able to withstand frosts below 20°C for long. Pack dogs gather closer together, warming each other, and dig holes in the snow. Cats do not know how to dig holes, and do not gather in packs. If you doubt whether cats are cold in winter, pay attention to how few familiar faces you meet when going to work in the morning: in the summer there is a mug under every car and on every bench, in winter they all disappear somewhere.

Somewhere - these are, as a rule, basements and entrances. Although in last years many basements are tightly sealed, and ordinary doors are replaced with metal ones with an electronic lock. Of course, from a sanitation point of view, populating basements with stray cats is not The best decision, however, for many people this is only chance survive the winter.

Is it just the fur coat?

The temperature at which cats freeze depends not only on external factors and wool density. For example, a cat that is accustomed to life on the street can tolerate the cold more easily than a pet that leaves a cozy apartment only for short trips. In addition, many cats are heat-loving from birth, and even if the owner does not spoil the sissy, they freeze at the slightest frost. Such pets, even when the room is well heated, always huddle close to the radiator or try to crawl under the blanket, sit with a ruff, sleep a lot and move little, dreaming of a warm summer. Of course, it is unlikely that cats are afraid of the cold in the same way as people, but the belief in nine lives and extreme resistance to any disasters is a clear delusion.

I was well prepared for winter: I took a warm jacket out of the closet and put a bag of Whiskas in my pocket. Now I always have it there, in case I meet my little brother or my little sister on four legs, with a tail and green Martian eyes of inexpressible strength and clarity.

The wind is blowing, a blizzard is blowing, and people are gliding in black silhouettes across the snow and ice. People are rushing home. They have a house. What is it like for homeless cats and cats lost in huge city, where there are no canteens with mice in sour cream for them, no shelters with sofas on which they could sweetly doze all day? And when I saw a small four-legged shadow quickly running across the road in the cold evening darkness, I suddenly, as if on a whim, began to see the metropolis through the eyes of a lonely stray cat.

The cat lives below us, which means that everything seems higher, bigger, scarier, more dangerous to her. She runs, paws moving through the snow, and her figure is snatched out of the darkness by crazy car headlights. She runs through alleys where the delicate pads of her paws are burned by chemicals scattered by street cleaners, and sneaks through yards where she is threatened by packs of feral dogs or a domestic terrier who has been taken for a walk and let off a leash. And with a joyful bark he rushes at the cat.

I know all the stray cats and cats in the area, although that doesn't mean I know them. I cannot boast of the honor of close acquaintance and trusting relationships. All of them, as befits an animal that grew up in the city, are wary of people. So, here they are, my friends and neighbors. In the basement of the house opposite lives a cat clan consisting of three red cats. They have the lean build of flyweight boxers and stern, unsmiling eyes. In the parking lot next door, surrounded by a chain-link fence, lives a fluffy white that is fed by caretakers. And there is also the gray-white Kisa, I am more familiar with her.

It happened like this. It was evening. I was walking along the sidewalk and suddenly I saw her. There are giant cats couch potatoes with round faces, there are sheep with a scruff like a bear's, but that's not about her. A small, harmoniously built cat wandered confusedly and nervously on the edge of the sidewalk. As soon as I stopped and asked a question about the reasons for her concern, she immediately began a story about her life with a plaintive meow. I saw her opal eyes and a small pink tongue in the darkness. Her story was sad and sorrowful, she talked about a saleswoman in a store who regretted a sausage, about empty cans in a trash heap, about a futile search for food among stone and asphalt. I got it. “Wait for me here, do you hear? Do not go anywhere. I'll come now! " - I told her and went to the store on the other side of the street, where I bought two bags of Whiskas. And she was waiting for me because she understands human speech. There is no need to be arrogant, we are just two-legged fools, understanding our speech is not at all difficult.

Since then, I have met her more than once in this place at the same evening hour. Sometimes, as I approached, I slowed down my steps and spoke quietly, or even just thought: “Are you there, Kisa? Come on out!” - this is enough when communicating with a cat, which picks up invisible impulses with its whiskers and ears. She would immediately emerge from the thick shadows under the trees or emerge from under the front wheels of a parked car, where she would sit like a little sphinx. I fed her by squeezing Whiskas onto a piece of cardboard or directly onto the asphalt, and then walked away, because an outdoor cat will never let you get close. She is always on the alert, always ready to splash sharply to the side, because she knows the treacherous cruelty of people. Only after I left did she start eating. Watching a cat eat is an indescribable pleasure.

I'm not alone. I know that many people walk around Moscow with bags of cat food in their pockets and buy one sausage from the meat department to feed a street cat. We are an order of secret helpers who save stray cats and cats from hunger during the cold days of winter. Yes, a cat has a beautiful natural fur coat, but imagine yourself in the cold 24 hours a day, even in a fur coat. The cat is freezing. My paws are getting cold in the snow, my stomach is churning from hunger. To survive in the frozen stone jungle, she needs to eat well.

Recently, one young stray teenage cat climbed under a car and lay down to sleep there. It's warm under the car, whose engine has been running all day. And he slept all night like a sweet cat's sleep in his unreliable shelter, until the minute when, early in the morning, the man got behind the wheel and drove away. But the cat stayed because his paws were frozen into the ice. So he spent several hours motionless, slowly freezing, this fluffy gray lump with snow in his ears and frost on his eyebrows and mustache, hearing with his weakening hearing in his dying half-sleep the barking of close dogs - until people discovered him and freed him paws, thawing them with buckets of warm water.

Whether homeless animals should or should not live in cities, I don’t know. I just don't think about it. When I see the crown of creation, a cat or cat in all the charm of their white whiskers, soft paws, fluffy tails and mystical eyes, I take out a bag of food I had stored in advance from my pocket and feed them. I know people who put cats in their yards in the cold carton boxes and insulate them with foam rubber. I know others who go to an empty holiday village to feed a wintered cat, which a cruel idiot took to play for the summer, but did not want to take to the city. There have been many slogans in Russia over the last hundred years - “Death to the bourgeoisie!”, “Punish the Trotskyists!”, “Shoot the saboteurs!”, “Shame on the national traitors!” and so on in the same terrible spirit, but I would replace them all with just one: “Save the cats! Feed the cats!

The clan of redheads living in the basement has been fed by an elderly woman for several years. She walks poorly and has bad legs. But every day at five o’clock she comes to the window leading to the basement with a bag containing chicken legs. She buys and cooks them for the redheads. They are already waiting for her, these thin bandits, at the white plastic bowl. This bowl is inviolable, it always stands in the same place, and for several years not a single janitor or a bully has touched it. And she feeds them. And today I saw how she, in a black coat and a shapeless hat, was fiddling heavily and laboriously at the window into the basement, attaching plywood to it in order to reduce the hole, but leave an entrance. It's winter, snowstorm. Cold weather ahead. It needs to be covered so that the cats don't get blown.

Of course it's freezing! It is absurd to think that since a cat is originally a wild animal, it can easily and simply adapt to frosts and winter cold. Even the super woolly one domestic cat In winter, you need the warmth of a home.

Observing our pets, we come to the conclusion - even with room temperature cats and cats find a place where it is warmer - and it is there, curled up in a ball, that they rest. What can we say about frosts?

What temperature can cats withstand in winter?

The answer to this question cannot be universal for all Muroks and Murzikovs. Some experts do not recommend walking at -20°C. But this is a very relative parameter. Because there are a lot of factors that affect the “winter hardiness” of each individual animal.

• Breed. It’s easier for mongrels, but for sphinxes, for example, it will be cold even at +10°C.

• Wool, presence or absence of undercoat.

• Habit. There are representatives who walk around their property in any weather, especially in the villages, few people bother with cats and cats. But our village man managed to get a slight frostbite in his ear - and it’s simply impossible to keep him in the house. And there weren’t even any significant frosts...

• Age. Kittens and old animals cannot keep their body temperature constant.

• General health. Hidden diseases, pregnancy in cats weakens the animal and its resistance low temperatures decreases.

Cats and cats in the snow in winter - photo story