A CAT must have used up most of its nine lives after somehow surviving a fall from the 18th-floor window of a Southampton tower block.

Redbridge Towers resident Carley Burke, 21, was searching for her tabby cat called Jaffa Cake when she woke up one morning earlier this month and could find it.

But her face turned to horror when her partner and sister went outside to find Jaffa Cake “half-dead” on the concrete floor.

Daily Echo:

Carley, who has a two-year-old daughter, said she “broke down” after coming to the realisation that Jaffa Cake must have fallen out of the flat window.

She has looked after Jaffa Cake for a year and a half after finding her as a three-week-old stray kitten in the snow.

The tabby cat, who suffered a swollen face from the fall, was carried upstairs and began to throw up black blood, so Carley rushed her to the Southampton PDSA Pet Hospital and was informed that Jaffa Cake had a high temperature and would need to stay the night at the vets.

After cancelling her shift at work, Carley was left extremely worried about her pet and expected the worst.

Daily Echo:

The bar assistant said: “She never goes on the windows and so I panicked a lot.

“I stayed up all night expecting to hear bad news, but when I went to the vets the next morning, they said she was fine and that they were really shocked that she didn’t have any broken bones or a broken jaw.”

Carley’s cat had to be given medication and was taken to her usual vets, Beech House Veterinary Centre, the next day for a check-up, but Carley was reassured again that she was “going to be fine”.

She added: “Jaffa Cake will now be a really nervous cat.

“I want to warn people to be careful because an animal or a kid could fall out of a flat window.”

Vet nurse team leader at PDSA Southampton Victoria Couzens said: “A cat named Jaffa Cake was first brought into us out-of-hours, we were advised that she had fallen from an 18-storey flat.

“She was checked over but incredibly had no serious injuries.”

Daily Echo:

She added: “By the morning she was bright and alert and seemed to have no injuries at all from her misadventure.

“It’s something of a mystery as to how she survived such a high fall with no injuries. I know cats are able to twist their bodies in mid-air, meaning they generally land on their feet and perhaps leading to the ‘nine lives’ myth.

“But I’ve not come across a cat that fell from such a height so miraculously unscathed. She’s quite a miracle cat.”