Silent Cat’s Rare Cry Saves Ohio Family from Carbon Monoxide Leak

A quiet rescued family cat found his voice at the most important time, warning his family that their house was filling with deadly carbon monoxide.

A family in Ohio adopted a black-and-white cat about seven years ago, and the family joke for the Kesckes family was that he never made noise. In fact, ‘Boo’ would squeak, if anything, but that was rare. The family says it was sort of like a joke how quiet he was.

Turns out he was just saving his voice for the most important things–like saving his family from death by deadly carbon monoxide poisoning.

Boo’s family was snug as bugs in rugs last week when all of a sudden, he began meowing so loudly, the whole family was woken up. David Kesckes said that he and his wife woke up slowly, and as they did, they saw Boo fall and pass out in front of them. He says that came out of her room, and then again in front of their eyes, their daughter Ariana passed out too. Though a family cat, Boo is mostly Ariana’s buddy.

Boo sort of woke up, in and out of consciousness and stumbling, but with the continued loud meowing that was very explicitly warning of them of something not right. The family says that he just kept passing out but never stopping to try and wake them and they were flabbergasted because they’d never heard him meow like that.

This guy saved our family today

Posted by Ariana Kecskes on Tuesday, May 15, 2018

The family believes it was is if he’d been saving his voice for this one, most heroic thing. The family’s other cat helped also, going in and reviving David so he could revive everyone, get them out of the house and call 911. He told 911 they were all dizzy, had fainted and needed help.

When first responders arrived, they found an almost-lethal level of carbon monoxide in their house and the family was rushed to the hospital. Carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless and tasteless, so it is often called a silent killer. The family’s boiler was malfunctioning and released the deadly gas.

It’s been said that squeaky wheels get the oil, but in this case, the cat that finally meowed saved the day! Well done, kitties!