Carolyn Duncan and her granddaughter were leaving the farm where Duncan keeps her horses on New Year’s Eve day when she passed a cat sitting in a ditch.

Duncan decided to turn around because the cat wasn’t moving and it was 20 degrees below zero.

“She was just sitting there, staring, with one eye open,” Duncan said of the cat.

She noticed as she picked the cat up there was a hole melted in the snowbank where she had been. “It looked like she’d been sitting there quite a while,” Duncan said. “She was close to death. She couldn’t run away.”

Duncan put a coat over the cat to keep her warm. “She was skin and bones and had a puncture wound above one eye,” Duncan said, adding she found that South Central Veterinary Associates in Skyline Plaza was open, so she took the cat there.

She learned that the cat had a respiratory infection and ear mites. Her ears and tail were frost-bitten. The vet estimated her to be about a year old. She got some antibiotic for the wound and took her home.

“She didn’t eat on her own for two days,” Duncan said. “She had to be hand-fed. She was dehydrated.”

Duncan said her own cats didn’t at first seem to like the newcomer, who she named Evie, because she found her on New Year’s Eve. They have since come around.

She said she knows the cat belonged to someone, because she was very friendly from the start. She also would eat only canned food.

“Somebody spoiled her right away,” she said.

Duncan learned that the Albert Lea Animal Shelter and Humane Society were full, so since she had grown attached to the feline, she chose to keep her. She had her spayed.

Since being adopted and recovering from her near-death experience, she’s a playful, funny cat, Duncan said.