Tightly clutching her ginger cat, Oksana Altynchurina sat in an inflatable dinghy, after rescuing only her pet and a few documents from her flooded flat.
In the southern Russian city of Orenburg the River Ural has burst its banks, inundating thousands of homes after heavy rain and melting ice swelled rivers across the region and in neighboring Kazakhstan.
By Saturday muddy brown water covered a vast expanse of the city, the worst-hit areas near the river where many live in houses and blocks of flats.