“Suddenly I woke up in the early hours covered in sweat and couldn’t move. Billy was on my chest, meowing loudly in my ear.”
“Suddenly I woke up in the early hours covered in sweat and couldn’t move. Billy was on my chest, meowing loudly in my ear.”
A hero cat saved his owner’s life by pounding his paws on her chest to wake her up after she suffered a heart attack.
Sam Felstead, 42, was asleep when she was woken by her seven-year-old cat Billy at 4:30 a.m.
She realized she was unable to move her body and had shooting pain down her right side so called out to her mother Karen for help.
Felstead, was rushed to the hospital by her mother in the early hours of August 8.
Doctors told her she had suffered a heart attack in her sleep and Felstead believes Billy’s swift actions saved her life.
Felstead said: “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.
“He was really meowing. 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.
“He’s normally all my mom’s, he loves her and doesn’t bother with me.
“Mom 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.”
Felstead and her mother, who she lives with, phoned emergency services but were told she would have to wait two hours for an ambulance to arrive.
Her mother drove her to the hospital where doctors said she had suffered a mild heart attack.
Felstead added: “I was wet through with sweat and had really bad back pain and my right side felt really heavy and strange.
“I couldn’t move it. I couldn’t stand up either and it was very dizzy when I got up.
“We rang 999 [Emergency services] but they said there would a two-hour wait for an ambulance so my mom took me. We went off to hospital.
“They sorted me after a while and they 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.”
Felstead spent three days in the hospital before being discharged and was reunited with her beloved Billy, a British short-hair cat.
She added: “When I came home at first he wasn’t bothered, he completely ignored me.
“He’s just the same now, I just try to give me a bit more love.
“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.
“The doctors said it was a good job I got to hospital in time.
“I do think he saved my life and so does everybody else around me.”
Cat behavior expert Lucy said Billy may have picked up on physiological changes in Felstead.
She said: “It could be that the fact he jumped on her and was meowing was a sign of his anxiety.
“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.”
Produced in association with SWNS.
