A woman claims that her pet rat stopped her house from going up in flames.
A pet rat stopped her owner's house from burning down
Caroline Davis has explained how she was half asleep when she dropped a lit cigarette onto her dressing gown as she drifted off into a snooze but her rodent, named Ratty, spotted it burning a hole in the clothing and quickly leapt into action.
The rat dropped the cigarette onto the non-flammable conservatory tiles and then set to work on waking Davis up.
The mother-of-two from Cambridgeshire said: "That night, it it hadn't of been for Ratty, we could have lost our home, or maybe even our lives.
"She saved us, and I like to think that's her way of paying me back for rescuing her in the first place."
Ratty was rescued by Davis last year after her cat Paddy dropped her inside the house and has now formed an unbreakable bond with the rodent.
She said: "It got to the point where she'd been with me for so long, she probably wouldn't survive back out in the wild.
"So I kept her, and earlier this month she repaid me in spades."