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Teri Hively has adopted Oliver, the kitten she credits with detecting a gas leak, alerting her to it and saving her life.
"He was my angel. I just felt like there was a reason that he was here, and I felt like this was his place where he was supposed to be," Hively said, explaining why she decided to keep the orange tabby kitten after he had been in her temporary care.
When Hively, who works as an early intervention specialist based at Robert Bycrot School, found Oliver, he was a stray. In September she took him to Angels for Animals, where she is a volunteer. She offered and Angels agreed to have her provide a foster home for Oliver.
Foster Homes
Angels typically places cats in foster homes until they get their shots and are spayed or neutered, to prevent disease transmission that could occur among animals in the Angels shelter. After living in the foster home, cats typically reside in the Angels shelter until they are adopted.
One October morning 12-week-old Oliver awakened her by at 4:30 a.m. by biting her face, something Hively said Oliver hasn't done since then. Hivley's dog slept next to her but didn't wake up to alert her.
Hively, who also has five other cats, then noticed natural gas hissing from a valve behind the refrigerator. The gas was so thick it made her vomit. She shut off the valve, opened all her windows and doors to air out the house and returned to bed.
When she awakened later that morning, she called a friend who is a firefighter and emergency medical technician, told him she had a headache and went to Salem Community Hospital at his urging.
Caron dioxide
Hospital personnel X-rayed her chest and tested her blood, finding elevated carbon dioxide levels in her blood and lungs. They gave her medications including an antibiotic to prevent pneumonia and an inhaler to combat shortness of breath, should it occur.
Hively usually closes her bedroom door to prevent her cats from coming and going during the night, but had left it open
the night of the gas leak, thereby allowing Oliver to enter and
wake her up. "It's hard to think about what could have happened
if I hadn't left the door open," she said in a telephone
interview. "He's kind of quirky. He's real playful. He likes to roughhouse with the other cats, and he's a mommy's boy. He's always on me," Hively said.
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