Rescuers followed missing lady’s cat meowing non-stop at them during the search — and found his 83-year-old owner where no one expected

A rescue party of nearby residents was quickly formed to search the farmland where they all live.

PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO

(L ) A rescue party looking for a missing person ; (R) A black cat on the street (Representative Cover Source: Getty Images | Photo by (L) Dragos Condrea ; (R) Jacques Julien)

Cats are often called aloof and unbothered pets, but they can also be some of the smartest and compassionate four-legged companions humans could ask for. Just ask this elderly woman, who owes her life to her black cat after she went missing. In August 2021, when a team of rescuers had a hard time tracking her down, a feline pulled off a rescue and saved her.

A woman hugging a black cat. (Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Westend 61)

When a then 83-year-old woman went missing, a search party had tough luck finding her. According to Business Insider, a friend of the woman was the first to report her missing, and a rescue party of nearby residents was quickly formed to search the farmland where they all live. But during the search, they came across a black cat, sitting on top of a gate by a maize field, meowing at them nonstop. They knew the cat belonged to the woman, but were unsure why he was meowing constantly. "The cat is very attached to her, and he was going back and forth in the gateway and meowing, so I decided to go and search the maize field," said Longmuir, who was among the search party group.

Firefighters and ambulance headed together to civilian's home. (Representative Image Source: Pexels| Photo by Papparazzi Ratzfazzi) — Firefighters and ambulance headed together to civilian's home. (Representative Image Source: Pexels | Photo by Papparazzi Ratzfazzi)

Longmuir followed the cat around the bottom of the field and began calling the woman's name, when she started hearing a faint noise. "Just as I was going to go off the path and start going through the crop, I heard a very faint response to my calling... I then quickly realized my neighbor was down the 70-foot ravine," Longmuir recalled. Reportedly, the woman had gone through the barbed wire and was lying in the stream for many hours. Immediately after spotting her, the police received the rescue call, and they managed to pull her to safety. According to Bodmin Police's Facebook post, the cops were assisted by Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service, a specialist water rescue team, South Western Ambulance Service, and Cornwall Air Ambulance, who transported the woman to the hospital after she was retrieved.

The post also praised the brave cat, Piran, for being the four-legged hero of the rescue mission. According to a 2021 study published in PLOS ONE, cats can mentally track where their owner is based purely on auditory cues, even when they can’t see them. In the experiment, cats first heard their owner’s voice from one location, and then shortly after, heard the same voice from a completely different place, without seeing the person move. The cats showed visible signs of surprise and confusion, which suggested that they had formed a mental map of where they believed their owner was. The study revealed that cats don’t just respond to their owners’ voices, but they understand where the voice should be coming from, indicating a deeper awareness of human movement and emotional connection.