Winnie Saves an Indiana Family of Three from Dying of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

"If it wasn't (sic) for Winnie screaming and hollering and carrying on, we wouldn't be here today."
-- Cathy Keesling

It was 1 a.m. on March 24th and the members of the Keesling family of New Castle, seventy-two kilometers east of Indianapolis, were sound asleep in their beds. Little did they know that a deadly intruder was loose in their house. To be more precise, carbon monoxide from a defective gas pump being used to remove water from their flooded basement was being spread throughout the house by the heating system.

Fourteen-year-old Winnie, a gray-colored American Shorthair, knew what was afoot and decided that she had better do something quick. Jumping in bed with Cathy and Eric, she began nudging her mistress's arm and meowing loudly. Not wishing to have her repose interrupted, Cathy at first tried to ignore her cat's plaintive cries but when she refused to quieten down she was forced to rouse herself.

"It was like one o'clock in the morning, and she came over to my hair, and kept pulling at me," Cathy recalled for KFIE-TV of Evansville on April 11th. (See "Family Pet Saves Their Lives.") "All of a sudden she starts this screaming, real loud, trying to wake me up, when I walked around here, I felt sick."

Thanks to Winnie's heroics, however, Cathy had just enough consciousness left in order to summon emergency personnel. Upon arrival, they found her delusional and the couple's fourteen-year-old son, Michael, unconscious in a hallway.

All three members of the family were fitted with oxygen masks and removed from the house. They were then treated for exposure to carbon monoxide and have since recovered. (See photo above of them with Winnie.)

"If it wasn't (sic) for Winnie screaming and hollering and carrying on, we wouldn't be here today," Cathy told WFIE-TV. She's "my little wonder cat, I guess."

A spokesman for the Henry County Sheriff's Department emphasized just how perilously close the Keeslings came to taking a very long ride on the dragon. "Even if it had been another five minutes, the outcome would have been horrible, would have been a coroner's case for sure," he said.

According to Cathy, heroics of this sort are nothing out of the ordinary for Winnie. For instance, it was only last summer that she warned the family about approaching tornadoes.

Because their senses are so acute, cats are able to detect all sorts of deadly fumes, sudden changes in the weather, slight movements in the earth's tectonic plates, and various other phenomena that elude man's comprehension. They may even be psychic as well.

Winnie has certainly made a believer out of Cathy. "I truly believe cats can sense these kinds of things," she is quoted in the April 6th edition of the Sydney Morning Herald as saying. (See "Cat Wakes from Nap to Save Family.")

Although dogs are justifiably saluted for rescuing individuals in emergencies and for their incomparable tracking ability, cats also save lives. For example, last year a cat in Koln named Mohre saved the life of an infant. (See Cat Defender post of April 21, 2006 entitled "Cat Named Mohre Saves Newborn Infant Abandoned in the Cold on a Doorstep in Koln.")

In spite of all the unconditional love, companionship, and service that they render to the human race, man continues to slaughter tens of millions of cats and dogs each year at shelters all across America. Morality, decency, and self-interest demand that these killings be stopped.

Photo: Associated Press.