Meet Britain’s only guide CAT who’s been trained to sense his owner’s seizures
Meet Britain’s only guide CAT, Pickles.
She’s been trained to do everything a dog can, and can even detect when her owner is about to have a seizure.
Kim Ward, 50, who owns Pickles, was left in a wheelchair after a bus crash in 1999 and suffers from seizures.
To make it worse, unlucky Kim, from Blackheath, began losing her eyesight in 2011.
Since then, she’s been training her faithful pet to help her out around the house.
Pickles is responsible for doing chores such as finding her phone and getting her things from upstairs.
Kim said: ‘We trained him to sit, stay, wait, and lay down. We taught him like you would a dog.
‘When my phone rings he will go and stand next to it so I can find it – I don’t have peripheral vision but I can see him against certain surfaces from certain angles.
‘He’s a bit like a guide dog.’
The 50-year-old and her husband Keith, 55, say they never imagined Pickles would develop such a great skill.
The clever cat has even taught himself to predict when Kim is about to have a fit – and does his best to warn her.
She said: ‘Pickles will do his utmost to warn me that a seizure is due and will stay with me all the time until I’m safe.
‘He will claw the furniture or run around to make noise when he knows I’m going to have a seizure.’
Though she doesn’t have epilepsy, she often has sudden attacks on a daily basis and more serious ones every few weeks.
If it happens unexpectedly, she could lose consciousness and risk falling so when Pickles rings the alarm, she lies down until the danger has passed.
Kim added: ‘I’ve mentioned it to doctors and they have heard of dogs sensing it because of chemical smells but not cats.
‘We haven’t taught him that – he did it himself.’
Read more:
http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/29/meet-britains-only-guide-cat-whos-been-trained-to-sense-his-owners-seizures-5911535/#ixzz4A4SJeZLZ