Fluffy the Frozen Cat is the story of a three-year-old outdoor cat from Kalispell, Montana, who was found buried in a snowbank in late January 2019 with her fur matted in ice and her body temperature so low it did not register on the clinic's thermometer1. Staff at the Animal Clinic of Kalispell brought her back to a normal feline temperature of around 100 to 102 degrees Fahrenheit using warm water, hair dryers, heated towels rotated in and out, and eventually a heated kennel1.

The images circulated by the treating clinic are what made the story recognizable: a limp, ice-encrusted long-haired cat on an exam table, followed a few days later by photos of the same cat, dry, fluffy and standing upright2. The visual before-and-after of a nearly frozen animal turning back into a healthy pet is what pushed Fluffy from a local rescue into a wider viral feel-good story3.

Fluffy the Frozen Cat is typically referenced as a feel-good rescue story rather than an image macro. People commonly share the before-and-after pictures, ice-covered cat next to the recovered fluffy version, as a reaction to any story about surviving extreme cold, or as a punchline in winter weather posts. The name also gets pulled up whenever another cold-weather animal rescue goes viral.