My cat refused to leave the kitchen all day, perched on the gas stove and meowing incessantly—I was horrified when I finally understood the reason for her odd behaviour.
That morning, my cat had acted strangely from the start. Usually, she dozed lazily until noon, twitching her paws in sleep, but that day, she seemed restless from dawn.
She wouldn’t step away from the kitchen. Every time I entered, there she was, sitting atop the gas stove—sometimes yowling urgently, other times hissing at nothing, her gaze fixed on the wall.
I carried her out several times, thinking she was merely seeking attention or playing a game. Yet the moment I turned away, she was back, watching me with wide, unblinking eyes as if trying to speak.
At first, I assumed she was hungry. I filled her bowl with kibble and offered her favourite treats, but she ignored them entirely. This was unusual—my cat never refused a scrap of food.
By evening, I began to feel unwell. Fatigue weighed on me; my head spun, and a dull nausea settled in my stomach. I blamed it on exhaustion or perhaps the weather. But my cat grew more frantic—darting across the kitchen, leaping onto the stove again, meowing so loudly it grated on my nerves.
Then, at last, the truth struck me, and terror gripped my heart.
It wasn’t until late that night that everything became clear. When my neighbour popped in to borrow a tool, he frowned and said, “There’s a strong smell of gas in here.”
We called the emergency services at once. They discovered a carbon monoxide leak—a crack in the pipes behind the stove. The gas had been seeping in slowly, and the symptoms I’d dismissed as tiredness were poisoning.
Even now, I shudder to think what might have happened if not for my cat. She had sensed it from the beginning. Her cries, her hissing, her refusal to let me leave—all of it had been a desperate warning.
We rushed to hospital, were checked over, and, thank heavens, suffered no lasting harm. But since that day, whenever my cat acts strangely, I stop and listen.
She saved my life that night.
