A pet cat became a hero after saving her owner’s life by pounding her chest to wake her up as she was experiencing a heart attack. The 42-year-old cat owner was fast asleep when the life-threatening incident happened. It was her seven-year-old cat, Billy who meowed in her ears and hit her chest with its paws until she finally woke up at 4:30 a.m. covered in sweat.
This is when Sam realized that she could not move her body and that she had been experiencing shooting pain down her right side. Unable to understand her symptoms, she called out to her mother, Karen, who then drove her to the Medical Centre on August 8.
Following tests and examinations, doctors determined that Sam had suffered a heart attack in her sleep. “They sorted me after a while and sent over to city hospital. They found one of my arteries was blocked which caused the heart attack. They looked after me ever so well, so that was quite nice, I have a lot of medication to take for life and I have to take it easy for six weeks. It’s just sitting and doing nothing. I’m trying to get out and do slow walks. I had to have a balloon in my artery to open it back up again,” she shared according to Yahoo! News.
Felstead cannot be more thankful for Billy’s quick actions. “I was a bit shocked, I went to bed and I felt fine,” she said recalling the day of the incident. “I’d even been out with the dogs and I didn’t feel ill or have any pains whatsoever. Suddenly I woke up in the early hours covered in sweat and couldn’t move.”
“Billy was on my chest and was meowing loudly in my ear hole. He was really meowing,” said Sam, adding that it was quite unusual for Billy to do that. “He doesn’t do that normally, he sleeps all day and all night, that’s his life. He wouldn’t leave me. He’s not a lap cat. He’s not a light cat either and he’s certainly not a cat that wants to be on your knee all the time. He likes to be alone.”
“He’s never woken me up in the night before, he never bothers you. He doesn’t wake you up for food,” she added. “He’s normally all my mum, he loves her and doesn’t bother with me. Mum was quite shocked. I told her he woke me up and she was even more shocked. You don’t hear about it with cats. I’m just glad he woke me up. Who knows if I would have got up without him, it could’ve been worse for me.”
If it wasn’t for her furry feline, Sam could not have shared this amazing story with the world. “I’m grateful towards him as I didn’t know if I’d have woken up. My alarm was for another two hours so who knows if I would have woken up…I do think he saved my life and so does everybody else around me,” she added.