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You read about this sort of thing in Reader’s Digest or in a Chicken Soup book and you won­der: Would my pet react like that? Could my pet save my life? My cat did. She saved the lives of my girl­friend, my daugh­ter, and myself.

Saturday morn­ing I awoke with a light­ness and nearly uncom­fort­able ache in my lungs. Only when I breathed deep did I notice, and I imme­di­ately asso­ci­ated the sen­sa­tion to rad­i­cal alti­tude changes.

Years ago I had trekked with friends from Florida to Aspen, Colorado. I ended a dri­ving shift in flat East Colorado, and fell asleep in the back of the car. Upon wak­ing hours later, I found that my chums had dri­ven us far­ther west and higher up than Denver, the Mile High City. When my car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem accel­er­ated to wak­ing lev­els my lungs dis­cov­ered that the den­sity of the air had changed sig­nif­i­cantly. Drawing breath, extract­ing suf­fi­cient oxy­gen, was pos­si­ble but… dif­fer­ent, requir­ing more work. It made me vertiginous.

Since that 1991 road trip I’ve been to and through Denver and higher alti­tudes numer­ous times. Whenever the change is sud­den, as it is when I fly in or sleep through the ascen­sion in car, I expe­ri­ence what I’ve come to call “alti­tude lung.”

On Saturday morn­ing I woke with alti­tude lung. I thought noth­ing of it. I had, late the night before, flown home from San Jose, California. I have no idea about the alti­tude of San Jose, although I didn’t recall expe­ri­enc­ing alti­tude lung when trav­el­ing to San Jose from sea level Portland, Oregon. Still, Friday had been a long day of work, sev­eral hours trav­el­ing by car, sev­eral more fly­ing and wait­ing to fly. The short, one and one half-hour air plane trip had been dis­pro­por­tion­ately uncom­fort­able. By the time I arrived home Friday night, I’d been on the go 16 hours, includ­ing breath­ing the atmos­phere of two cities and the pres­sur­ized air of a 727. My older step-daughter (pseu­do­ny­mously Mojo) was vis­it­ing with her grand­par­ents, so my ten year old (pseu­do­ny­mously Sassy) occu­pied my side of our bed. As a consequence–and because Sassy is a kicker–I slept on the couch, which tends to make me clench the mus­cles through­out my torso in my sleep. All these fac­tors com­bined eas­ily explained the sen­sa­tion that I was breath­ing air of a dif­fer­ent den­sity than that to which my lungs were accustomed.

So, noth­ing there to worry about. I got up, started my day.

Before Sassy and my girl­friend came to retrieve me at the air­port, two of our ham­sters had passed. One, Tinker, had been mak­ing progress in fight­ing an infec­tion in her cheek. Her pass­ing was sad, but not sur­pris­ing; we assumed she had suc­cumbed to the ill­ness. The other hamster–our last after the pass­ing of the favorite in August–was 12–18 months old, in the twi­light of her life. Although Lili’s death was sur­pris­ing, it was under­stand­able. Yet their pass­ing in the same evening kept nib­bling at the edges of my con­scious­ness, wor­ry­ing its way toward the fore like an ani­mal gnaw­ing a bone in search of marrow.

I con­tin­ued to brood on the near simul­ta­ne­ous pass­ing of the ham­sters while I used cof­fee and a mind­less video game to try to shake the lethargy from my brain Saturday morn­ing. It was then that my cat, Chloe, saved my family’s lives.

You read about this sort of thing in Reader’s Digest or in a Chicken Soup book and you won­der: Would my pet react like that? Could my pet save my life?

Chloe, my com­pan­ion of more than ten years, leapt up on my desk as she often does, but her behav­ior was any­thing but typ­i­cal. She inces­santly licked the back of her paws as if some­thing there were bit­ing her. Upon inspec­tion, no par­a­site or even dirt irri­tated the skin there. More pro­foundly, Chloe spo­rad­i­cally panted, a quick, des­per­ate type of pant with her tongue jut­ting for­ward between tiny teeth. It wasn’t a con­stant pant­ing, just short bouts, spas­modic. She leapt about my desk, finally div­ing des­per­ately across my desk to point her face down at the floor–at the floor vent, I would later realize.

Abruptly leav­ing the room, Chloe jumped about the kids’ bedroom–to the win­dow, into a dresser drawer, behind the bed, and then back through them all again. She was search­ing for pock­ets of clean air, we decided later. Holding her in my arms, she was clearly agi­tated and seemed to be pos­si­bly hal­lu­ce­nat­ing as she kept paw­ing at the air as if a bug were buzzing about before her.

Not know­ing what was both­er­ing my cat, the death of the ham­sters ris­ing beyond the level of strange coin­ci­dence and well into urgent con­cern, I rushed Chloe to the vet. We were taken in imme­di­ately, pushed ahead of a wait­ing room full of other pets and their com­pan­ions. The vet­er­a­narian went directly to ques­tions regard­ing poi­son­ing: Could she have got­ten into any med­ica­tions? Any clean­ing sup­plies recently used or left out? Could she have lapped at anti-freeze in a nearby dri­ve­way or gut­ter? What didn’t jive with poi­son­ing were two facts: Her eyes exhib­ited nor­mal pupi­lary response; most house­hold poi­sons and drugs cause ani­mal pupils to either dilate or con­tract, or to atleast grow slug­gish in their response to light. Additionally, the ham­sters, safe in their cages, could not have encoun­tered the same poi­son as Chloe… unless it was airborne.

On cue, Strawberry Blonde called. A mouse was dead.

We have two young girls with a pen­chant for rodents. Thus we had, until this week­end, four mice and two ham­sters in addi­tion to our dog and cats.

Strawberry Blonde sus­pected car­bon monox­ide. When I repeated the words the face of the vet stand­ing before me, his hands on my cat, grew taut with con­cerned recog­ni­tion. All the symp­toms Chloe exhib­ited were con­sis­tent with car­bon monox­ide poisoning.

In fires, it’s rarely the flames that claim lives. Nearly always the actual cause of death is smoke inhala­tion, specif­i­cally car­bon monox­ide poi­son­ing. Carbon monox­ide deprives the body and brain of oxy­gen, caus­ing the brain dura­mat­ter to swell and press against the inte­rior of the cra­nium. The smaller the ani­mal, the less brain tis­sue to enflame and the smaller the space avail­able to accom­mo­date the swelling. Thus, the smaller the ani­mal, the sooner it will die from the effects.

My thoughts imme­di­ately flew to 85 lb Sassy who had com­plained of a headache as I walk­ing out the door with Chloe. I barked at Strawberry Blonde to open all win­dows in the house, turn on every fan, and get out–echoing what she was already doing.

The vet gave Chloe an anti-inflammatory shot and me his cell num­ber with the instruc­tion to call should her con­di­tion fail to improve.

On the way home, I picked up a car­bon monox­ide detec­tor. The minute we put bat­ter­ies in the device it began wail­ing and flash­ing its “leave the house now” mes­sage. This was approx­i­mately 40 min­utes after every win­dow of the house had been opened. Forty min­utes of dif­fus­ing the atmos­phere of the house and it was still poi­so­nous… What had it been like first thing in the morn­ing, after the heat had run all night, when I awoke with alti­tude lung?

The heat­ing man­i­fold in our fur­nace had gone bad, pump­ing not warm, safe oxy­gen but lethal, odor­less, col­or­less car­bon monox­ide through the floor vents in every room of our home. Strawberry Blonde had turned the heater on for the first time this sea­son on Friday morn­ing, while I was in California. The day had warmed in late morn­ing, and the tem­per­a­ture sens­ing heater had shut down until evening. Had Strawberry Blonde turned it on a day or two ear­lier, or had Friday’s after­noon weather turned cold, I might have returned home to my fam­ily dead. Had the ham­sters not died and Chloe not been so insis­tent in her trou­bling behav­ior, it would have been Mojo return­ing home to find her mother, sis­ter, and me dead. That thought more than any­thing chills me.

As sad as we are at the pass­ing of our pets, we are just as grate­ful that, in their deaths, our lives were saved. Ultimately, it was Chloe, my faith­ful cat, who told us in body lan­guage that some­thing was wrong with the air. Her intel­li­gence is astound­ing, and, if I were not still reel­ing from the grav­ity of what might have been, I would likely be more impressed and proud of Chloe’s intel­li­gence and deter­mi­na­tion. While the death of the two ham­sters both­ered me both emo­tion­ally and intel­lec­tu­ally, and we would have noticed the pass­ing of the mice, we might not have made the con­nec­tion in time to save our­selves. We might have con­sid­ered a dis­ease pass­ing between the rodents, or a local­ized air­borne killer. Even a sick­ness in the cats would not nec­es­sar­ily have informed us of the cause.

Chloe’s pan­tomime, rac­ing between all but com­pletely enclosed areas low to the floor and behind large fur­ni­ture, jump­ing to the win­dow, and point­ing her head emphat­i­cally toward the floor vent, is what, after some time to inter­pret, told the story. Even her des­per­ate pant­ing was an urgent game of cha­rades. Each time she did it was for so short a dura­tion that the pur­pose was obvi­ously not to cool her down or bring in fresh air.

Chloe has com­pletely recov­ered, return­ing to her nor­mal behav­iors. Sassy’s headache dis­si­pated shortly after she was moved out­side and then to her father’s house for the day. Neither Strawberry Blonde nor I con­tinue to exhibit any symp­toms of expo­sure to the toxic gas. And, three mice and our other ani­mals all seem to be doing well, fol­low­ing their nor­mal rou­tines of run­ning, jump­ing, stalk­ing, or barking.