Nicole Paling looks on in utter disbelief, her body trembling as boyfriend Brett Norton gently cuts away at the tightly-wound duct tape.

His tiny, furry patient — though no doubt terrified — lays calmly on the table. Each snip with the pocket knife brings her closer to relief, until the nightmare is finally over.

“We’re all horrified about this poor girl,” said Paling, founder of Every Life Matters Cat Rescue, who shockingly found a little brown tabby left outside of Burlington’s Mountainside Animal Clinic last night, Tuesday.

With one of her rescued cats in respiratory distress, Paling had just arrived at the Industrial Street clinic (in Guelph Line and Mainway area) — where she volunteers — around 8:30 p.m. when she noticed a cat carrier in the parking lot.

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“I figured it was a cat left there by mistake; some people think it’s animal control,” she explained.

Upon closer inspection, the abandoned feline had silver duct-tape tightly wound around her face, with only a small opening at the nose.

Recalled Paling, “I was having a panic attack. I’ve never seen anything like this. I could barely type in the security code (to the clinic).”

The lifelong cat lover immediately called her boyfriend, who rushed to the clinic and — with steady nerves while Paling was recording — needed about 10 minutes to free the tabby. (Warning: Video below contains disturbing images.)

Said Paling, “It felt like forever."

“You couldn’t tell where her ears were, so I couldn’t use scissors. It’s an animal … you can’t let them go like that,” said Norton, when asked about any nervousness felt during the ordeal. “The coward that did this did it under the cover of darkness. The cat was so thirsty, drinking like crazy afterwards, so who knows how long she was like that."