A cat with infinite lives.
Soren High, a clothing designer from Portland, Oregon, paid $3,200 to freeze-dry Lokicat, her 16-year-old dead cat.
In the viral video, posted on her TikTok account @teapourn, with 4.9 million views, High shared the preservation and mourning process with followers.
“I witnessed my cat being killed by a dog I was fostering in front of my house late at night,” High, 35, revealed.
The pet owner took the death hard, saying, “This has been one of the hardest losses of my life, and I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and since her death was such a sudden loss.”
In an interview with Insider, High admitted “I knew I wanted to have [Lokicat] preserved the day I took her home. It was an immediate knowledge that we were going to be together forever.”
High decided the best way to memorialize Lokicat, who died Feb. 18, would be to freeze-dry her.
“Freeze drying has less impact on the body tissues [compared to taxidermy], making the preservation much more ideal. There’s very little chance that she wouldn’t look like herself through freeze-dry,” High shared in a follow-up video.
The pet owner kept the cat’s body in her freezer for a month before shipping it to the Animal Family Pet Preservation in Ohio.
The company offers freeze-drying as an alternative to taxidermy, where cold temperatures are applied in a vacuum over a long time to remove moisture from body tissue.
“Having the ability to touch her again is really special, being able to see her in the house again, just knowing that she’s here, I personally believe it will really help me with my grief.”
Three months later, when she received Lokicat in the mail, she shared her excitement to reunite with the plush pet, who now resides on High’s bedside table.
“I’m very, very, very happy to see her right now. I’m happy to wake up next to her in the morning, and I can pet her,” she squealed.
In several TikTok clips, High gets emotional explaining the cat’s freeze-dried process to her followers.
“She is actually fully intact, meaning she was never skinned, and all her bones are actually still inside,” the bereaved pet parent explained.
All of Lokicat’s organs were removed with an incision and then cremated — except for her heart which was also freeze-dried: “In the end, she was simply put in a dryer and dried at very low temperatures to become this.”
High also purchased a personalized urn that features the cat’s face surrounded by a wreath, to place Lokicat’s cremated organs inside.
Some people questioned the longevity of the cat’s appearance with such a unique method of preservation.
“She’ll look like this forever,” High maintained, as long as the feline isn’t in humidity above 80%, stays out of sunlight and avoids temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Otherwise, the mummified feline could develop mold or decay.
High said after the tragic incident that she also found a new home for the foster dog — so she could focus on grieving and memorializing Lokicat.
“Remembering Lokicat the only way she deserved. Having a pet preserved is a personal decision and one that many may never understand,” High wrote.
