Every once in a while you hear about something like that happening, how very neat that you have a pet who takes charge. Wonder if she saw sparks or something.

When my cats come and tap me, it is only to lead me to the kitchen, where they sit and stare pointedly at the food bowl, where a tiny speck of the bottom of the bowl is visible.

I don't think my cats would realize that the lights went out. What a smart little girl you have!

That's awesome that you have an intuitive pet. I've always wanted a termite-sniffing dog! :-)

The most my cat ever tells me is that his food bowl is empty. He does that by running down the hall in front of me, adamently stopping in front of the doorway of the room is his food is in, looking at me, and then jumping over the doggy gate. If you miss the queue the first time, he'll do it again and again until you get the hint. Sometimes we ignore him the first time just to make him work for it. :-)

My dog tells me when when the garbage man is here, when the mail man is here, when the meter reader is here and when someone is at the door. She's such smart dog. :-)

You have a very smart cat. Hope she gets a treat tonight.

My dog Cody used to have what we called the "Timmy fell into the well" moments, but hers were more along the lines of the Frosty paws crying out to her from the freezer. Occasionally she would just start carrying on barking and barking until we followed her into the kitchen. Then she would sit in front of the fridge pointing expectantly to the freezer. They must have been crying to get out in the same frequency as a dog whistle.

That is one handy cat to have around! I'm impressed.
Our dog has "What's wrong Lassie?" episodes. you never know what it's going to be.....a sick calf, someone at the door, a frog, you have to follow him to find out. We have taught him to "go find" and he will search out either my husband or me. That's pretty cool.

Our rescue mastiff used to bark deeply and whine and then, on leash, take us to places on the property where people had dumped stray kittens. He saved many a cat that way, since they were so small it was otherwise hard to find them.

I used to have a male chihuahua who was the smartest dog I've ever had. Occasionally, when coming home from somewhere, he'd be sitting at the door waiting for me, and have his tail tucked, head hanging down, and be wearing a "go ahead and spank me, I'm a bad boy" look on his face. Sure enough, every time he did that, I'd have a look around and he had torn something to shreds and made a mess. He was really funny, so I'd have to struggle not to laugh. I really miss that boy... I had to have him put down at 16 years old, he was suffering terribly.

Our cat once woke us up at 5:00 a.m. acting slightly distressed. We discovered the drying element in the dishwasher had never turned off overnight. All the plastic pieces, including the bottom of the silverware basket had melted. We like to say he saved us before the house burned down. (Well, it could've.)

In case anyone ever asks you, melted Tupperware will peel off dishes much more easily than the off-brand plastic containers will.

I had a kelpi/border collie named Dobie. One night when my so and I were in bed Dobie started barking. She didn't bark in the usual way, she barked arf long pause arf. Instead of yelling calm down from the bedroom I went into the livingroom to see what the problem was. The door to our wood stove had come opened and a log was sitting on the floor smoldering. She saved us and our house. She was a badly abused dog, about to be shot by her owner when we got her. She paied us back in many ways this just being one.

This is a great thread & it sounds like our furry friends have saved us in not so glorious ways a lot. I always wished I had a dog like lassie or a horse like flicka, how neat would that be. One of my dogs started barking loud & in not his usual tone one night. When we got up to see what was wrong, he went to the back sliding door & started barking. One of our horses had busted the fence somehow in the middle of the night & was outside roaming around the yard. This could have been a real bad situation & I am thankful he warned us as soon as it happened. Terri

We all almost died of carbon monoxide poisioning in November. I woke in the night and heard a beeping sound. DH was not in bed, so I called out. He said the beeping was from the carbon monoxide detector and what should he do? I said, open the windows and doors and get the manual from the shelf above the detector. He did and I read it in the bathroom while he opened the windows. (Older bladders insist that they get attention before we consider running for our lives.) The manual said to leave the house. But the numbers on the meter were already falling, with the windows open, and the furnace off. Then DH thought he smelled gas in the house, so I sent him to get his dad out of the house while I called 911. Then I woke up our three dogs and put them on leashes and put them in my car in the driveway so they would not get in the way of the firefighters when they came. :-)

So, what was it Nancy, and is everything ok now?
Sammy

Lol Nancy, and dogs have something like 200 million scent receptors and markedly better hearing than humans:)

LOL Nancy! Your dogs sound just like my Jas-purr!

Our cat Nikita always knows when DH is about to return home - he could be gone on a business trip for two weeks. She starts rolling around in the doorway about 15-20min before I see him at the gate. It's not the sound of his car; he always takes a cab home from the airport.

She started 'chattering' one afternoon while I was reading a book - it was different from the sound she makes when she sees birds. She led me into the guest bedroom and I realised I'd forgotten to switch off the iron; maybe she saw and heard the steam and decided it wasn't 'normal'.

Once she 'told' me I'd forgotten to put the washing machine water outlet into the washbasin - there was water all over the bathroom floor. Niku loves water and enjoys her baths but somehow found this incident 'different'. Of course we got the plumber to fix the outlet so that it never happened again :)

She alerted me to an injured pigeon in the balcony; when I brought it inside she kept sniffing it and sounded very concerned about it - while all the other brats saw in my hands was a snack. The brats had been eyeing the poor bird with glee but only Niku thought of letting me know abt it.

This gal is definitely special. The other four cats don't seem to have anything but crazy-kitty-games going on in their wee lil brains LOL

Sammy, it was carbon monoxide from a 30 year old furnace and three dogs who slept through the whole thing! I suppose they could have been affected by the CO and maybe were drowsy and drugged, but I don't think so, they woke right up when I called them.

We got a new furnace three days later. Of course, there was no heat until the new furnace was installed.

Our very first dog, Mac, was extremely smart and extremely well behaved. It was quite a shock when we got the next one, and she was nowhere near as smart or trainable. That didn't slow us down, we currently have 4 West Highland White Terriers, westies, and we previously had 5 Westies, and 1 shih-tzu. All except the first are rescues and two of them are Therapy Dogs.

One time I was going down a few steps from our bedroom to the hallway and I slipped. I went up in the air, and then landed with the small of the back on the edge of the step. Luckily, the stairs were carpeted. Even with that, I couldn't move at first. Mac knew something was wrong and he stood in the hall barking at me. I told him that he definitely was not like Lassie.

My grey cat Phoebe, who is sitting on my lap now purring up a storm, let me know the other week that water was gushing from the washer hose because of a blockage of trees roots in the pipe. She's very intelligent and perceptive. I don't let my cats sleep with me but during the day if I'm in the back bedroom and Phoebe is on the comforter in there, she jumps down and winds around my legs. She wants me to take a nap with her and then proceeds to drape herself around my neck. And that's precisely why they don't sleep with me at night. Cats are all different personalities, arent they? The six I have are all pretty smart. Henry, Phoebe, Nellie, and Louie are the smartest and know many words and phrases.

My dog once came up to me in the middle of the night B4 we had an earthquake and woke me up and she also in the middle of the night, "told" me when our power went off.
So believe me I "listen" when she does unusual things and I check it out.

Why, just this very morning our cat Jasmine alerted my DH to the horrendous, hazzardous, man-eating bug in the upstairs hallway! It was so diabolical that it was TINY, better to evade our detection we presume. But she found it, and yowled and yowled and herded DH to the very spot where it sat - motionless in a very threatening way. Tee hee!

Actually, our animals have often alerted us that something was "not right" just by the way they were acting. My dh never took much stock in tornado warnings, until the day the 17 year old cat slithered into the basement on her belly during the storm. Green sky? Didn't care. Raining sideways? Not a problem. Cat slithering into the basement as flat as possible? Freaked him out so much he RAN down there LOL. There was a tornado that day, and it caused a lot of destruction not far from the house but luckily we had no damage.

"Mama, there's something out there!!!!"

That's what my little girl sheltie's been telling me when I walk with her out into the side yard before dawn for potty time. Yesterday morning, Zoey was worked up over something in front of our house, on the other side of the wire fence we have, so much that she wouldn't go potty on that side of the yard, which is where she usually goes. She quickly went potty on the other side of the yard, and she was rather upset I was standing near that front fence, as I tried to figure out what was out there. She's usually a calm dog, so there was something out there, cougar, coyotes, raccoons, who knows. It was pitch black, even with my lantern, didn't see any eyes peering back at me from the trees. Zoey didn't bark, just whined and cried and followed close on my heels when I went back into the house.

She had me sufficiently creeped out!

Our dog, Callie, does the usual barking whenever she sees anyone coming and going around our house, but she knows the "regulars"-- all the neighbors, the mailman, the trash collectors, etc., and she quiets down after two or three barks. If she sees someone she DOESN'T know, she simply does NOT stop barking until they go away... And so far, she's thwarted two daytime burglaries at two different neighbors' houses-- once when I was home (went outside to find a kid breaking into the neighbor's shed), and another when hubby and I were away at work, and the neighbors heard her barking and went to investigate.

Our neighbors all love her; they call her the "neighborhood watch," and they know that if Callie doesn't shut up, they need to see what's going on. In fact, SHE got more Christmas presents from our neighbors this year than hubby or I did; we won't be needing to buy dog biscuits anytime soon! :)