Early Spring floods in 2007 had inundated the flat neighborhoods and farms around the eastern Indiana house of the Keesling family. Their home’s basement had taken on some 30,000 gallons of water, and a gasoline pump had been set up to empty it. After the family went to bed, a crack in the pump’s venting system caused carbon monoxide to pour into the home’s heat ducts.
Cathy Keesling had closed all the windows in the house, save one on the first floor where Winnie, the gray-and-black-striped cat the family had rescued from a barn years before, was sleeping. When deadly gas filled the house, Cathy’s teenage son, Michael, fell unconscious in the hallway. Cathy and her husband, Eric, were slowly sinking into unconsciousness as well. Winnie had been breathing the clear night air, so she was the only living creature in the house that could tell something was wrong. But rather than escaping through the open window, Winnie raced over to Cathy.
“Winnie was pulling my hair and yowling in my ear,” Cathy recalls of her normally mellow cat’s unusual behavior. “I would wake up and pass out again. Every time I passed out, Winnie would wake me up again.”
Cathy managed to rouse herself and dial 911, but the gas knocked her out before she could tell the operator what was going on. The dispatcher sent out a state trooper and sheriff’s deputies, who dragged the family onto the porch and into the fresh air. A firefighter found Winnie in a closet.
Everyone recovered after many hours in the hospital, where the dire nature of their situation became clear. “The deputy sheriff told me that if Winnie had waited five more minutes to get us up, we’d all be dead,” Cathy Keesling says. “I’m so proud of her.
“I guess because we saved her life, she saved ours.”
“The deputy sheriff told me that if Winnie had waited five more minutes to wake us up, we’d all be dead.”
—Cathy Keesling
Four-year-old Charley, a West Highland white terrier in Atlanta, is not a search-and-rescue dog. In fact, when Charley made his lifesaving rescue last year, his owner wasn’t even aware that anyone needed help. One August day the little dog began urgently pacing and barking to be let out of the house. Owner Frances Gippert clicked Charley’s leash onto his collar and opened the front door. He dragged her away from their usual route and toward a yard three doors away, where Roy Monie lay semiconscious and badly bruised. Monie had fallen off a ladder and had suffered a brain hemorrhage. If Charley hadn’t found him—no one knows how—so that Gippert could call 911, Monie likely would have died. Since then, Monie and his family have embraced Gippert, who had lost both parents and her sister to cancer. Last year they all celebrated Christmas together. “This whole process has been very emotionally moving for me,” says Gippert, who was working from home after a difficult divorce. “It has changed my life. I just wanted to stay in my house, me and Charley,” she says. “Roy didn’t let that happen.”
Sandy LaPierre, cat owner, told Paw Nation, “When my landlord Dennie Fitzgerald kicked the door down, it scared Smoka and she panicked and ran under the bed.” The year-and-a-half-old cat, Smoka, who had her name long before the fire, has been with LaPierre since she was a six-week old kitten.
According to Fitzgerald, the building, constructed in 1890 with solid oak beams, burned for six hours and collapsed. “Five gas lines erupted,” he said. “The fire department had to use 30,000 gallons of water on it to put the fire out.”
“I thought she was gone,” LaPierre said of her cat. “I couldn’t hardly eat or sleep. I had people out looking for her.”
The Cat House on the Kings is California’s largest no-cage, no-kill, lifetime cat sanctuary and adoption center located on 12 acres along the Kings River in Parlier, California, which is in the central San Joaquin Valley, southeast of Fresno. [continue reading about Great Pets…]
Casper: He has been making the journey for so long that all First Bus drivers have now been told to look out for him to ensure he gets off at the right stop.Photo: PA
A spokeswoman for First Bus said the firm has put a notice up in the office asking them to look after the non-paying passenger.
Casper, which is 12 years old, boards the No3 service at 10.55am from outside his home in Plymouth, Devon, and travels the entire 11-mile route before returning home about an hour later. [continue reading about Great Pets…]
Soon after I started cartooning, about 19 years ago, I got my first pet, a kitten. I named her Sarah, after an editor who gave me my big break in cartooning.
I found the kitten from an ad in the paper. A local woman’s cat had a small litter in need of homes. They were little tuxedo cats, mostly black with white paws and mixed faces. The woman put them on her sofa as sort of a line up from which I could choose. Three of the cats ignored me, walking to one end and playing amongst themselves. The fourth stared me straight in the eyes and approached. She selected me. Or at least that is how it felt. She made me feel special from the first second I knew her, and I hoped to return the favor. [continue reading about Great Pets…]
Natasha and Max
Submitted by Candysse of Alta Loma, CA
A bearded collie named Max and Natasha, a once-feral feline, have struck up a relationship that seems to rely as much on Max’s perpetually moving tail—a great cat toy—as it does on the patience of his old soul. According to Candysse, the two unlikely companions are often caught snuggled up and grooming each other.
Piper and Pumpkin
Submitted by Tamara of Mason, OH
Piper, a miniature pinscher, previously shared her home with a 10-year-old shar-pei who was too elderly to play. “When my shar-pei passed on, I brought Pumpkin into our home,” Tamara remembers. “At first, I thought Piper wanted to eat him! Now they are so cute together. Piper chases Pumpkin, Pumpkin chases Piper, and then they fall asleep next to each other.”
Mischief and Ginger
Submitted by Sarah of Draper, UT
When Mischief joined the Farr family, this sweet, snuggly feline charmed more than just the humans. “On days when nobody was home, we left our German shepherd, Ginger, in the house to watch over Mischief,” says Sarah. Ginger immediately fell in love, and Mischief repaid his canine friend by licking her. “He had to give up that project, though, as it was way too much dog for one kitten to clean.”
