My Cat Would Not Stop Screaming at the Wall. It Was Carbon Monoxide.
61% BELIEVED
CASE FILE #542
FILED: Apr 9, 2026
CLASSIFICATION: Pet Stories
WITNESS ON RECORD: MarrowLane
JURY OF 170 READERS HEARD THIS CASE: 104 believed it, 19 had doubts, 47 weren't buying it.
People who do not like cats always tell me cats do not love you, they just tolerate you for food. I used to half believe it. Then Marmalade saved my daughter and me from something we could not see, smell, or hear, and I stopped arguing with those people because they clearly have never met a cat worth knowing.
Marmalade came to us as a stray who decided our porch was his and never left. He was enormous and orange and completely useless. His idea of exercise was walking to a sunbeam. He did not chase toys. He did not chase mice. A mouse could have signed a lease in our pantry and Marmalade would have watched it move in.
That is why the night it happened made no sense.
It was late October. I had turned the heat on for the first time that season. My daughter Priya, who was eleven, had gone to bed with a headache, which I blamed on screen time. I had a headache too, which I blamed on wine I had not actually drunk much of. We both felt a little sick and a little stupid and we went to sleep early.
Around two in the morning Marmalade started screaming. There is no other word. Not meowing. Screaming, this rising awful sound, over and over. I came out of sleep furious. He was standing in the hallway with his back arched, staring at the wall shared with the utility closet, and when I came near him he did something he had never done in six years. He reached up and raked his claws down my forearm, then ran to the wall, then back to me. Over and over.
I yelled at him. I am not proud of it. I picked him up to throw him in the bathroom so I could sleep, and he twisted out of my arms and went straight for Priya's door, throwing himself against it, howling.
I do not know why I finally listened. Maybe because I felt so sick and foggy that some animal part of my brain recognized another animal telling me something was wrong. I opened Priya's door and could barely wake her. She was groggy in a way that frightened me, slurring, heavy. That was when the fog in my own head turned into fear.
Marmalade came to us as a stray who decided our porch was his and never left. He was enormous and orange and completely useless. His idea of exercise was walking to a sunbeam. He did not chase toys. He did not chase mice. A mouse could have signed a lease in our pantry and Marmalade would have watched it move in.
That is why the night it happened made no sense.
It was late October. I had turned the heat on for the first time that season. My daughter Priya, who was eleven, had gone to bed with a headache, which I blamed on screen time. I had a headache too, which I blamed on wine I had not actually drunk much of. We both felt a little sick and a little stupid and we went to sleep early.
Around two in the morning Marmalade started screaming. There is no other word. Not meowing. Screaming, this rising awful sound, over and over. I came out of sleep furious. He was standing in the hallway with his back arched, staring at the wall shared with the utility closet, and when I came near him he did something he had never done in six years. He reached up and raked his claws down my forearm, then ran to the wall, then back to me. Over and over.
I yelled at him. I am not proud of it. I picked him up to throw him in the bathroom so I could sleep, and he twisted out of my arms and went straight for Priya's door, throwing himself against it, howling.
I do not know why I finally listened. Maybe because I felt so sick and foggy that some animal part of my brain recognized another animal telling me something was wrong. I opened Priya's door and could barely wake her. She was groggy in a way that frightened me, slurring, heavy. That was when the fog in my own head turned into fear.
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Votes on record: 104 believed · 19 unsure · 47 didn't · 61% of readers believe this story