A Wisconsin couple is lucky to be alive thanks to their 8-year-old Maine Coon mix Gracie, who saved her owners from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Last month, Reedsburg resident Annette Shanahan woke up in tremendous amount of pain, she told ABC News.
“I had gotten up because I thought I was having a heart attack,” she told ABC News. “You’re so fuzzy you can’t make a reasonable thought. So I had gotten up and gotten to the chair in the bedroom and I thought I was going to die. I wasn’t in the presence of mind to even tell my husband.”
Shanahan said she had fallen asleep in her bedroom chair and only woke up when Grace began rattling on the door.
“Gracie started pounding at the door. Pounding loud. She was really pounding,” she said. “Our house is 120 years old so the door rattles.”
Shanahan’s husband, Kevin Shanahan, heard the sounds coming from the door and realized that something was wrong when he stood up.
“My husband went and looked to see if our children were home. But I couldn’t stand up. I was thinking in my head I was having a heart attack. I slid down on my side down the stairs and he had gotten my cellphone to call our children to find out where they were.”
Shanahan’s son could tell that on the phone that something was wrong with he heard his father’s slurred speech on the phone. Shanahan dialed 911, but their son arrived before the police did.
“We didn’t have the presence of mind to think to get out of the house,” she said. “All I got out was our address. I said, ‘I can’t breathe’ and kept repeating our address.”
Emergency responders discovered lethal amounts of carbon monoxide in the second floor of the couple’s home when they arrived, Shanahan said.
“Alliant Energy came and tested the house and upstairs was 600 something, and a normal house is supposed to be between 0 and 5.5,” she said.
The Shanahan’s home uses a tank-less gas heater for its water, and the vent to the heater had gotten iced shut, she said. When both of their children had taken showers earlier in the evening, the carbon monoxide was pushed into the couple’s bedroom.
They may not be alive today had it not been for Grace.
“We usually sleep with our door closed and right before we went to sleep she was outside our door meowing which is very unusual,” said Annette. “So I thought, ‘Oh I’ll just let her in. She wasn’t’ feeling well. She sensed something was wrong before that I guess.”
The Shanahans have now replaced their outdated carbon monoxide detector, but it turns out that their beloved pet may be the greatest detector of all.
“We were definitely saved by Grace,” she said. “Saved by Gracie.”
(H/T: ABC News)
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