I’m not sure what’s extenuating (maybe you meant extraordinary, which I still disagree with) about being in -20°F by herself when just barely past kitten stage. All scientific papers and opinions I’ve ever read about cats puts them at the least domesticated of human companions, able to survive without us just fine.
The domestic cat retains a behavioural repertoire that makes some individuals very successful when living independently of people, and all cat populations show a degree of genotypic and phenotypic flexibility that enables them to move between states within a few generations, or even within a lifetime (Bradshaw et al. 1999)
The states being referred to here are states of domestication versus true wildness.
The very recent history of ‘true’ domestication, beginning perhaps as little as ~200 years ago, means that domestic cats effectively remain genetically ‘wild’ (Tamazian et al. 2014). Few genomic alterations in domestic cats are attributable to domestica- tion, excepting genes affecting memory, fear-conditioning and reward learning (Montague et al. 2014). Domestic cats have retained the genetic basis for effective hunting (Bradshaw 2006), including sensory traits such as a broad hearing frequency range, high visual acuity and accentuated vomeronasal capacity (Montague et al. 2014).
ETA: links and quotes
Ahh