THE GOOD GREMLIN
For Sharon Davies-Patrick, black and white kitten Gizmo proved to be an incredibly lucky cat, in more ways than one…
Incredible cat Gizmo saved the lives of his family.
Of all our cats, Gizmo was probably the luckiest. Evading the fate of previous cats who owned us since 1978, he wasn’t shot by a neighbour, hit by a car driven by one of our relatives, or run over by our own car in the driveway, but enjoyed a long and happy life, living to a ripe old age.
We welcomed ‘Little Giz’, as we nicknamed him, into our home during the summer of 1995. He was named after a character from the film ‘Gremlins’ either because he was cute and lovable, or because his ears were too big for his body — or a combination of both. Whatever the reason, this gentle black and white bundle of fluff had us wrapped around his little paws. He would sit in my dressing gown pocket without complaint and let me tie gold tinsel around his neck on Christmas Day.
A SIXTH SENSE
He wasn’t a particularly boisterous kitten. Rather than lie in wait to ambush mum’s bare toes as she walked past, he preferred to try his luck seeing how long he could sleep in the fruit basket on the polished dining room table before he was caught. I managed to take a photograph before he was removed from the scene.
He grew into a fine, handsome fellow with a laid back c-attitude, loving to snuggle up under dad’s arm for a cuddle and a snooze on the sofa in the evenings watching football. It was on one such evening that Gizmo became a true hero.
Our feline friends are quite superior to us humans in that their senses are much more heightened, giving them an air of mystical sixth sense abilities.
An acute sense of hearing enables them to hear ultrasound, thus giving them the distinct advantage to eavesdrop on a shrew squeaking to his mates for help when cornered by his predator under the garden shed.
A group of sensory cells located in the mouth area, known as the Jacobson’s organ, enable a cat to taste smells and detect unusual odours. They also have a remarkable 200 million odour-sensitive cells in their nose compared to a human’s mere five million. Their whiskers and the hair on their bodies are exceptionally responsive to touch and vibrations.
A LIFESAVER
These attributes stem from their fundamental survival instinct which in this case kicked in and woke Gizmo from his nap. Smoke and vapour was filtering into the living room from the kitchen. Sensing imminent danger, he stood on dad’s chest padding and clawing frantically at his jumper. We’ll never know how long he had been doing this before, thankfully, dad opened his eyes to be greeted by Gizmo’s face staring down at him meowing and the room full of blue smoke. Dad jumped up, opened the windows, and shouted to mum.
“There’s something funny going on, I can hear something,” he said. A hissing sound pointed to one thing: gas!
Dad immediately rang the emergency service.An engineer arrived and switched off the mains gas. Investigating the cause, he found that behind the cooker the gas pipe and electric cable were positioned next to each other. The electric cable had been rubbing against the gas inlet pipe for some time and the heat had created a hole in the pipe causing the leak.
“If it had been left any later it would have exploded,” the engineer said. Thanks to Gizmo’s innate survival prowess and persistence, he not only saved dad’s life, but also one of his own nine lives on that day. Needless to say, he received chicken treats along with snuggles in abundance for a long time afterwards.
Sadly, unlike his character namesake, Little Giz was not immortal and at the age of
15, began to suffer from a liver problem. One day, he didn’t come in when mum called him. She heard a distressed meowing coming from next door’s garden. Knowing the time had come, she cradled him gently in her arms and took him to the vet’s. He is now buried under the apple tree at the bottom of the garden.
Gizmo became a true hero.