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BEAR LAKE — PETA is awarding a Cedar Hills man who performed CPR on a kitten for over an hour and saved its life.

Justin Bingham said he was visiting Bear Lake with his family for Thanksgiving when the incident occurred. He said it had snowed heavily the night before and his family was headed out to play in the snow when the kitten was discovered in the yard of their cabin.

Bingham said the 8-week-old kitten was lying face down in the snow and its eyes were frozen open. His relatives thought it was dead, but Bingham who had done some pre-veterinarian work at BYU said he thought it was still alive.

"I knew what death looked like in a cat's face because their pupils get really big, black, dilated and that's what this cat looked like," he said. "But it wasn't completely stiff. It wasn't warm, it was freezing cold, but rigor mortis really hadn't set in. It wasn't like a rock-hard cat. So I knew that it had just barely died or it was on its last leg."

Bingham grabbed the kitten and ran inside the cabin. He began warming the kitten in front of the fireplace and started doing chest compressions and rubbing the kitten to warm it. He said he did alternating rubbing and chest compressions on the kitten for about an hour before the kitten showed signs of life.

Justin Bingham with his family. Photo courtesy of Justin Bingham

"A lot of people at that point just left because they thought it was dead," Bingham said. "But I just kind of stuck with it, and about an hour into it, it started to kind of twitch its mouth a little bit. And then about 30 minutes later, it started to take visible breaths."

Eventually, the kitten began to take stronger breaths and slowly made a full recovery. Bingham said his cousin took it to a local veterinarian the next day and it was deemed healthy with no side effects. He currently has two cats so his brother adopted the miracle kitten and named it Lazarus.

Members of PETA heard about the incredible experience and decided to award Bingham with the Compassionate Action Award for going above and beyond to save the kitten.

"Thanks to Mr. Bingham's kindness and persistence, this kitten has a new chance at life," PETA Senior Director Colleen O'Brien said. "PETA encourages caring people everywhere to take this story as inspiration to come to the aid of animals in need."

Bingham said he was surprised when he found out he would be receiving the award.

"I was totally surprised," he said. "I was like, 'Wow, I didn't even know how you heard about it.' But it's cool. I had animals growing up. Holy cow, I think I had 11 animals at one point, if you include some fish in there. … Still kind of have that love for animals. … I kind of lost my 'man card' a little bit when people started to hear about me saving a little kitten, but that's OK."

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