My cat refused to leave the kitchen all day, perched on the gas hob, mewing relentlessly—until I realised why, and sheer terror gripped me.
That morning, she’d acted oddly from the start. Normally, she’d laze about till noon, paws twitching in lazy dreams, but today, she was restless, almost frantic.
She wouldn’t budge from the kitchen. Every time I stepped in, there she was—on the hob, yowling one moment, hissing the next, her wide, unblinking eyes fixed on the wall as if it held some unseen menace.
I scooped her up more than once, carrying her to the living room, convinced she was just attention-seeking. But the second I turned my back, she’d dart straight to the hob again, staring at me with those urgent, glowing eyes, like she was screaming a warning I couldn’t hear.
At first, I thought she was hungry. I filled her bowl, even offered her favourite treats—but she ignored them. That wasn’t like her. My cat never turned down a scrap of tuna.
By evening, I felt awful—dizzy, weak, my stomach churning. I blamed exhaustion. But the cat grew wilder, darting across the tiles, leaping back onto the hob, her cries so shrill they set my teeth on edge.
Then, at last, the truth hit me—and my blood ran cold.
It wasn’t until my neighbour, John, popped round to borrow a spanner that the pieces snapped together. He frowned the moment he stepped inside.
“Christ,” he muttered, “you’ve got a gas leak. Strong one, too.”
The emergency crew confirmed it: carbon monoxide seeping from cracked pipes behind the hob. The symptoms I’d brushed off as fatigue? Poisoning. Slow, silent, deadly.
Even now, I shudder thinking what might’ve happened if not for that cat. She’d known from the start. Her cries, her hisses, her refusal to let me leave the kitchen—all of it, a desperate plea.
We rushed to hospital, got checked—miraculously, no lasting harm. But now? Whenever my cat acts “odd,” I stop. I watch. I listen.
That night, she didn’t just save my home.
She saved my life.
