Clever Kitty Saves Owner’s Life By Jumping On Her While She Was Sleeping To Alert Her Of Heart Attack

Aug 26, 2022 by apost team

As if you needed another reason to love cats, but here it is: they could save your life.

This was something 42-year-old Sam Felstead of Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, in the United Kingdom learned on the night of Aug. 8, 2022, as she was sleeping. In the wee hours of the morning, she was awoken by her 7-year-old cat, Billy, who had climbed onto her chest and was meowing loudly in her ear.

“He doesn’t normally sit with me but he knew something was wrong because he wouldn’t leave me alone,” Felstead told BBC. “I do think he saved my life and so does everybody else around me.”

Unbeknownst to Felstead, who awoke to feelings of pain in her arms and back, she was experiencing a mild heart attack. Sweating profusely and finding it difficult to move, she called her mother, Karen, for help.

“I was a bit shocked; I went to bed and I felt fine. 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,” she recounted.

“I was wet through with sweat and had really bad back pain and my right side felt really heavy and strange,” she said. “I couldn’t move it. I couldn’t stand up either and was very dizzy when I got up.”

Felstead’s mother then called for an ambulance but was told it would only arrive in two hours, so she drove her daughter to the hospital.

There, Felstead told BBC her doctors said “it was a good job I got to hospital in time,” and she had Billy to thank for that.

Cat behavior expert Lucy Hoile told BBC it was possible Billy had picked up on changes in Felstead’s physiology prior to waking her up.

“It could be that the fact he jumped on her and was meowing was a sign of his anxiety,” she said, adding, “I do believe he probably did save her life because that’s what enabled her to get medical help, but I wouldn’t go down the route of saying he did it on purpose.

“It was him reacting to the situation.”

Meanwhile, Felstead was forced to undergo an angioplasty, a procedure in which a small balloon is inserted into a blocked coronary artery to force it open wider. After being warded at the hospital for three days, Felstead was allowed to return home. But she did not receive the warm welcome she was expecting.

“He completely ignored me,” Felstead said. “I don’t think he has one bit of a clue what’s happened,” Felstead told the BBC, adding she was glad Billy woke her up.

“I’m grateful towards him as I didn’t know if I’d have woken up,” she said. “My alarm (wasn’t) for another two hours, so who knows if I would have woken up,” she added.

Despite saving her life, Felstead admitted Billy had never been her biggest fan.

“Normally he sits next to my mum all the time, he’s not interested in me. He loves my mom and gives her lots of love,” she said. “He doesn’t like me. … He’s more my mom’s cat so he would have done it to my mom I think more but just the fact that he was meowing and jumped on me and sat on me, wouldn’t leave me, well I think he saved my life.”

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What do you think of Billy’s life-saving feat? Do you have cats? Have they ever done anything unexpectedly spectacular for you? Let us know, and go ahead and pass this on to all the animal lovers you know out there.