Cat saves family from house fire

Patches went from a normal house cat to a hero after she saved six people from certain death in the early hours of the morning on January 18.

Anita Naidoo, her six-year-old grandson Daiyaan, her sister Angela and her three children were sound asleep when Patches went to Anita’s bedroom door and started meowing.

“At first I shouted at her to go away, but she just would not stop meowing and wobbling. I got up angrily to take her out and as soon as I opened my bedroom door, I was confronted by a thick cloud of smoke. It took about 20 seconds before I saw a faint orange tinge in the smoke and I then realised the house was on fire,” Anita said.

She then ran to her sister Angela’s room and banged on the door to wake her and the children. Anita said the children were scared and confused, but she ushered them inside the master bedroom, where she shut the door.

“I knew that if any of the doors or windows were to be opened that the fire would explode once oxygen was let in, so for a few minutes we were trapped inside the room with no way out. By God’s grace I remembered that my en-suite bathroom has large windows which were only partly covered by burglar bars. I subsequently broke the middle window pane and jumped out, whereafter my sister handed the children to me one at a time.”

Despite calling for her several times, Patches was nowhere to be found at the time. Once outside, the family could see the kitchen engulfed by flames and when they ran around to the front of the house, smoke was also coming through the tiles of the roof.

Angela lifted the children to safety over a fence, while Anita tried to gather their two dogs.

“I was bleeding profusely from cuts I sustained by breaking the windows, but I ran out to the street screaming in an attempt to flag down anyone for help. Some people just drove past. Our neighbour’s son eventually came out and asked whether everyone was out of the house,” Anita remembered their ordeal.

By that time, flames were visible through the roof and the neighbour’s son called Nigel Emergency Services, who later arrived to extinguish the fire.  At 06:00 as Anita’s alarm clock sounded, the whole roof came plummeting down.

Although the family had lost nearly everything in the fire, the story has a happing ending as far as it relates to Patches. To everyone’s amazement, she was later found alive and well after she had crept inside an opening in the bed base to protect herself from the smoke and flames.

“I would like to thank each and every person that came to our aid that morning and those that have helped us in other ways too. We are grateful to be alive, but had it not been for Patches, things would have been much worse,” Anita said.

She added that a preliminary forensic report reveals the fire was caused by an electrical fault that started in the roof.