Hero Pets

Baby, the 13-year-old cat whose persistent pestering in the middle of the night saved her owners from a house fire, has come back home, reports the Chicago Tribune.

The heroic kitty had been missing since the pre-dawn hours on Monday, when Baby and her owners (Letitia Kovalovsky, seven months pregnant with twins; boyfriend Josh Omberg) escaped the fire that ravaged their house in suburban Chicago. With a bedroom blazing and smoke filling their house, Baby sprang to action when smoke detectors failed to signal an alarm. She jumped all over Omberg, rousing him from his sleep.

But when the family escaped, unharmed, from the house, Baby ran off. "Cats scared in house fires often return after the scene clears," Assistant Fire Chief Mike Weber of the Wonder Lake Fire Protection District told the Northwest Herald.

Luckily, Baby did just that on Tuesday afternoon, reports the Chicago Tribune. Apparently lured by some food left in a live trap cage that had been set on the home's front porch by Omberg, Baby was spotted sitting in the cage the day after the fire.

Omberg happily retrieved Baby from his employers, who made sure the heroic cat remained safe. "I thought she would come back," a relieved Ornberg told the Chicago Tribune.

A dogged little cat named Baby is credited with saving her family members from a house fire.

It was just past 12 a.m. early Monday morning in suburban Chicago when Baby's owners, Letitia Kovalovsky -- seven months pregnant with twins -- and her partner, Josh Omberg, were sleeping on a couch in their living room, reports the Chicago Tribune. Unbeknownst to the slumbering couple, a fire had erupted in the back bedroom where they normally slept. But Baby, their 13-year-old white, brown and gray tabby, immediately sensed the danger.

"The cat jumped on the [sleeping] homeowner and kept coming back, which was unusual," Carrie Ozog, a firefighter and paramedic with the Wonder Lake Fire Protection District, who was on the scene, tells Paw Nation. "The homeowner woke up and saw an orange glow. When he stood up, he saw the house was filled with smoke."

Firefighters racing to the scene saw the blaze from a block away. "The flames were shooting twelve feet high from the northeast corner of the house," says Ozog. The entire family, including Baby and a pet dog, were safely outside the house and unhurt.

Within fifteen minutes, the fire was under control, says Ozog. But everything in the bedroom, including baby items and two cribs in a front room were destroyed by the fire and smoke. (An estimated $115,000 in damage was caused and the couple lost about $60,000 worth of personal property, reports the Chicago Tribune.)

"The smoke detectors weren't working," Ozog tells Paw Nation, explaining that the cause of the fire was being investigated, but that it was not considered suspicious. "It was extremely lucky the couple were sleeping in the living room and not the bedroom. It could have been disastrous."

Meanwhile, Baby the hero cat disappeared from the scene a few hours later, possibly spooked by all the activity at the house, reports Northwest Herald. "Family members are searching for the cat and they'll let us know when they find her," says Ozog, adding that the Wonder Lake Firefighters Association is collecting donations of cash and baby items for the family.

For further information, call 815-728-0088, or send mail to P.O. Box 447, Wonder Lake, IL 60097.

A house in Walnut Creek, Calif., had been vacant for several weeks, leading suspicious neighbors to call animal control to investigate. When they arrived, they discovered two crates full of chihuahuas, none of which had survived. But the tragedy was joined by an incredible story of survival in the locked bathroom, where a kitten, a chihuahua, and Leonardo, a 108-pound mastiff, stayed alive against all odds, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Experts suspect the three animals drank toilet water to survive, and lasted weeks without food, with Leonardo never turning on his much smaller companions.

The efforts of a U.S. soldier to rescue a stray dog from his base in Afghanistan has ended in success, reports the Wichita Eagle.

Sgt. Lucas May of the Kansas Army National Guard has spent nine months stationed in Mehtar Lam, Afghanistan, where a tiny mutt wandered onto camp about a month ago. According to the Wichita Eagle, May was reluctant at first to feed or even pet the pup, since it is "against military rules to keep local animals as pets." After a few days, May decided to call home to his wife, Amanda, who happens to work as a fundraising director for the Sedgwick County Animal Response Team in Kansas.

"He loves dogs, and he knows how much I love dogs," Amanda May told the Eagle. "I told him, 'We'll do everything we can to bring her home.'"

Sgt. May wrote to his superiors requesting that he be allowed to do whatever he could to help get the pup -- whom he named Bella -- to Kansas. His request was granted, but the estimated $2,500 needed to ship Bella from Afghanistan had to be arranged privately. When the Wichita Eagle first reported May's story on Sunday, Amanda May had collected $500. Since then, local movie-theater magnate Bill Warren of Warren Theaters donated the rest of the needed amount.

"Thanks to a generous donation by Bill Warren and Warren Theaters, we have more than enough to bring Bella home!" May wrote on her Facebook page. "We are continuing our fundraising efforts to help all the other stray dogs in Afghanistan."

For now, Bella is being held at a shelter in Kabul. Sgt. May hopes to be able to bring her to Kansas around the same time he returns home in March.

With Christmas nearing, the story of one Missouri woman's pet bunny, as originally reported in USA Today, has been touching hearts nationwide.

As anyone who has worked with homeless animals can attest, the effort the job requires can sometimes feel much greater than the good that comes out of it.

Joy Gioia, who manages the non-profit House Rabbit Society of St. Louis, recently told Paw Nation: "Sometimes it's heartbreaking, many times it's rewarding, and occasionally there are moments of pure gold such as what happened with Ruby Angel."

Here is the story of Ruby Angel.

The House Rabbit Society is a nationwide organization dedicated to rescuing, sheltering, fostering and re-homing abandoned rabbits. With so many rabbits in need, local chapters like the one in the greater St. Louis area usually aren't equipped to accept a rabbit brought in by an individual who simply isn't able or doesn't want to care for the animal. However, the folks in St. Louis recently made an exception for a rabbit named Ruby Angel.

Ruby Angel was named by her owner, an unidentified local woman, who thought the white mark on the rabbit's nose resembled an angel with wings. When employees at the House Rabbit Society of St. Louis heard the woman's story, it became clear that this rabbit was an angel in more than appearance.