Dawn Felicani looked out the window on a recent chilly morning and spotted something small and black moving around on a barely frozen pond. It stopped her in her tracks.

She walked down to the pond and saw a cat nervously circling on a brittle sheet of ice.

"It was just so stressed," said Felicani, who was visiting her partner's grandchildren at their home in Westford, Mass., last Monday morning. "My panic was that I knew the ice was thin."

Felicani called Westford Animal Control, and officers said they were on their way.

Then, "all of a sudden, he moved, and I heard crackling," Felicani said.

The cat -- who was about 40 feet from the shore -- had plunged into the freezing pond.

"His little head was sticking out," Felicani said. "I was hysterical."

She sprinted to the house to call animal control again to ask if they were close. By the time she got back to the water a minute or two later, she saw two men were miraculously there helping the cat.

The men, landscape construction workers Nate Puza and Kris Seymour, were at a nearby job site when they saw the struggling cat.

"There's often geese and ducks out on the lake, what you don't normally see is a cat on the ice," said Seymour, 48. "Sure enough, we turned around and he had gone through."

They both jumped into action. Puza, 40, hopped in a rowboat that was on the shore, and used his shovel as a paddle to break through the ice and get to the cat. Meanwhile, Seymour got in the freezing water and pushed the boat forward as far as he could.

"It looked like it was struggling," Puza said of the cat.

By the time they got to the shore, Felicani and her partner, John Ryan, had brought down blankets, and they took the cat into the house.

Soon after, animal control and a police officer arrived.

"They put themselves at risk for an animal that wasn't theirs," said Kirsten Hirschler, an animal control officer. "If the guys hadn't grabbed him immediately, he for sure would have gone down and I for sure would have been doing a recovery instead of a transport."

Still, the cat was in poor condition.

"He was awake, but he was not moving," said Hirschler, adding that she scanned the cat for a microchip, and he did not have one. "His body was extremely cold; we didn't know how long he had been out."

"He didn't really have much fight in him," Seymour said.

Hirschler blasted the heat in her truck and transported the animal directly to the veterinarian.

"The first thing they did was take his temperature to see where we were at, and there was absolutely nothing on the thermometer," said Hirschler, who posted on Westford Animal Control's Facebook page in search of the cat's owner. "They were super-concerned."

"That's when I was like, 'I don't know if he's even going to make it,'" she continued.

But the cat persevered, and after having some warm fluids, he gradually recovered.

"He seems like a miraculous little feline," Hirschler said.

"I'm so happy it's all fine," said Felicani, who called the vet's office multiple times to check on the cat's condition. "I still can't believe it."

That same day, the cat's owners saw a Facebook post about their lost cat. A neighbor of Jon and Melaney Arden sent them the post, and they realized it was their cat, Tiki -- who is 20 years old and blind. Jon Arden called animal control.

"My wife went down and met them at the vet, and it was him," Arden said.

Tiki is an adventurous and independent cat, Arden said, explaining that when he was younger, he spent most of his time outdoors.

"He's an old-timer," said Arden, adding that they still let Tiki outside from time to time, but he doesn't go out for long, especially in the cold weather. "He'll just hang around the door area."

In this case, though, Arden was shocked Tiki got beyond their yard and made it all the way to the lake -- about half a mile away. Hirschler said they suspect Tiki might have been chased by a predator.

"This is the craziest cat story ever," Arden said, noting that Tiki became blind about a year ago. "I think he used up more than just one of his nine lives."

Arden said he is grateful to have Tiki home and in good health, and he and his wife are thankful to those who looked out for him.

"We're definitely going to keep him in as much as possible now," Arden said.

Everyone involved in the rescue said they're relieved.

"It really is a little Christmas miracle," Seymour said.

Hirschler said she hopes others will remember Tiki if they see an animal in need.

"My hope is that the story, with all of the courage and compassion demonstrated, will inspire others to make similar motions when seeing animals that need assistance," she said.