By KATH GANNAWAY
Strap: Life-saving kitty shares nine lives with owner
CRAIG Geeves has no doubt he owes his life to his cat, Sully.
“I’m pretty sure I would have died in that room if Sully hadn’t woken me; she saved my life,” he told the Mail last week after escaping a fire that destroyed his Wandin home.
Firefighters from six brigades responded to the 1am call on Monday morning, 1 September, but were unable to save the house.
Craig is not surprised that the cat he has developed such a strong bond with over the past eight years went to such extremes to wake him.
“She was screaming and pawing at my chest with a low-down guttural scream that woke me up,” he said.
“I’m a heavy sleeper … it takes two alarm clocks to wake me and you can see (from the damage) that by the time the fire reached to my bedroom it was an inferno.”
He could smell the smoke straight away, but said when he opened the bedroom door, with Sully in his arms, a pall of smoke hit him in the face.
Throwing Sully into the garden and out of harm’s way, he raced back in to try to extinguish the fire.
He was driven out when the kitchen ceiling, where he believes the fire started and where the smoke alarm was located, began to fall in on him.
Craig lost collections of antiques and tools, as well as irreplaceable photos and videos in the fire.
The jeans he was wearing, a box of coins he managed to grab as he escaped, and Sully, are all he has left to start afresh, but he says he considers himself very lucky to be around to rebuild.
Craig has always had a special bond with Sully who he adopted as a six-month-old kitten eight years ago.
He searched for a year to find the right cat and says there was an instant connection when they met at Blue Cross Animal Society.
“I’d looked at lots and lots of cats, but she was special. She came straight up to me and was all over me.
“She’s an unusual cat, more like a dog really; plays with sticks, sits on my shoulders and sleeps on the pillow next to mine.”
Yellingbo CFA captain Paul Spinks said brigades worked for hours to contain the fire and keep it from spreading to adjoining bushland, with crews at the scene until about 4.30am.
“At the end of the day, as far as house fires go, unfortunately this man has lost his house, his home, but at least he’s alive … and all thanks to a cat,” he said, adding
“That’s one hell of a smoke detector.”
