save

When you think of heroes, cats are probably not the first thing that comes up in your mind. Most of them are not known for rushing to save the humans they've chosen. But Masha, she is a special cat, and she has a really special, heartwarming story. 

Having come across a freezing human baby, Masha took it upon herself to save the baby. she curled up around it, kept it warm through the night, and in the morning, she strolled around and screamed until someone followed her and found the baby. She even managed to get herself into the ambulance with the baby afterward. Had it not been for her, the baby would have died. Of course, this amazing cat later on got adopted, and we can only say thank you - to her adopters because she deserves the most amazing forever home, and to her - for doing the impossible and saving the baby's life.  

For over a decade, Sakae Kato has stayed behind in Fukushima, rescuing cats abandoned by neighbors who fled the radiation clouds emanating from the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant. He refuses to leave. 

His story is one of heartbreak and selflessness, and we are thankful for all the work that he's done. 

"I want to make sure I am here to take care of the last one," Kato said from his home in the contaminated quarantine zone. "After that I want to die, whether that be a day or hour later."

Read more about his incredible story below.

Sometimes, we encounter such strange stories on twitter we don't even know what to think about them. From being chased by cows to accidentally bringing your sugar glider to your doctor's appointment, and the newest addition to the twitter animal madness is resurrecting a bird with your breasts. 

Confused? Yeah, we were also confused, but twitter user @Fizzygrrl seems to have indeed brought a bird back to life - twice - using her magical breasts. Still confused? Read the thread. The whole thing is one long, strange ride. So, thank you twitter, for providing our daily dose of weird internet mixed with some wholesome animal rescues. 

An unlikely hero showed up in Australia - wombats have been seen helping other animals in drought-ravaged areas in Australia.

As Newsweek reports, "[t]hese accidental heroes have been burrowing into an underground pool of water located on a beef farm southwest of Merriwa, New South Wales," and "[i]n the process, they have opened up the water hole for other species to enjoy." 

Read more about these heroic wombats and check out pics of adorable wombats below!

Meet Sorsha, a hero that we are all going to be celebrating. She's a rescued dog who was cruelly shot by her previous owner, got adopted into the most loving forever home and, later in life, turned into a guide dog. Then, she outdid even herself by becoming an actual hero and saving her owner's life. 

After her owner fell on an icy road, the amazing dog ran in front of an oncoming car, grabbed her leash in her mouth and physically dragged her owner away from the path of the car, having never been trained for it.

We would like to thank Melissa Amos, one of ICanHasCheezburger's animal loving users for sharing her and Sorsha's stories with us. Continue reading her incredibly story and giving love to Sorsha below, and if you have your own stories to share, come tell us about them in our Facebook group: ICanHas Storytime.

This is not your common 'cat in a tree' rescue story, let's start with that. 

What was going to be a tense and chilling heroic story of firefighters coming to the rescue of a helpless kitten, hoping for a happy ending, turned into a documentation of the bravest kitten in the world. This little kitten had eeeeeverything under control. Just as our heroic firefighter reached out and almost managed to pick the kitten up, the fierce kitten decided "to heck with it" and jumped down on its own... then immediately climbed up another tree. 

Check out the picture by picture documentation of this fascinating tale below.

Story via: york daily record

"[w]e definitely have angels among us," say the people at W-Underdogs in a Facebook post whose animal shelter caught fire while they were picking up supply donations. A situation that could have ended in the worst way possible ended incredibly positively, and that is because of a heroic 53-year-old homeless man named Keith Walker who ran into the smoking building and saved each and every one of the animals inside. 

Walker has been homeless ever since he was 13 years old. He had already known the founder of the shelter, Gracie Hamlin, who had let him keep his dog, a pitbull named Bravo, at the shelter every night. On his way to pick up Bravo from the shelter, Walker saw the fire and ran in, rescuing all of the animals in the shelter - 6 dogs and 10 cats.

"I was nervous as hell, I'm not going to lie. I was really scared to go in there with all that smoke. But God put me there to save those animals," Walker told in a statement to CNN. "If you love a dog, you can love anyone in the world. My dog is my best friend, and I wouldn't be here without him, so I knew I had to save all those other dogs."

Sadly, the W-Underdogs headquarters is now uninhabitable, but in another lucky turn, the shelter was just preparing to move to a different location. As they say in another Facebook post: "As fate would have it, today is the first day of our lease of a new facility we planned to be the new W-Underdogs Headquarters. While the new facility is not exactly 'move-in ready' we were able to move the animals safely into the new facility for the night. They are all happy, warm, safe, and comfortable in their new temporary home."

Hamlin told CNN: "He is my guardian angel. Even the firefighters didn't want to handle the dogs. They called animal control, but Keith was already in the building pulling out the cats and dogs until they were all safe." 

We are so, so thankful to Keith Walker and all the people who helped with the rescue and the moving of the animals, and we hope the cats an the dogs will have an easy time getting used to the new place. Good luck in the new year, guys! 

For more happy ending animal stories, click right here!

A true Christmas miracle! A 14-week-old kitten with no eyes was rescued by the RSPCA and reunited with his half blind brother. 

As the RSPCA reports, the blind kitten, later named Gabriel, despite having no eyes, is completely healthy. It is assumed that Gabriel had the cat flue, and so it is a miracle in and of itself that he survived. 

Krissy Raine, the RSPCA inspector who rescued Gabriel, explained: "It's amazing that Gabriel survived. I took him to a vet and they believe he had cat flu which left his eyes badly damaged and they perished. But he is very healthy, he needed no treatment from the vets at all." She continued: "Even though he was from a feral colony when I took him to the vets, they were shocked by how calm and friendly he was and instantly fell in love with him. We named him Gabriel as he is an absolute angel and everyone who meets him adores him!" 

That's not all though. A second miracle happened when Gabriel was brought into the shelter. There, he met another half-blind cat who was rescued a few weeks prior from the same area. Arthur is also believed to have had the flu which damaged one of his eyes. That eye had  to be removed through surgery, but thankfully, his other eye was saved. 

When Gabriel was brought into the shelter, "[t]he brothers instantly recognised each other."

And today, they are living together in the same foster home. "Gemma couldn't believe it when she realised she had rescued his brother a few weeks before and we knew we had to reunite them. Arthur was being looked after by a foster family and they were so excited to hear that his brother had been rescued - they welcomed him with open arms too. They are both with the same foster family now, they are such calm, caring and affectionate cats - such special little angels. Now that they are back together, Arthur can guide Gabriel through life."

The brothers will now be looking for a forever home where they will hopefully be able to live together. "It's a Christmas miracle for Gabriel and Arthur - we're just so pleased that they are together for Christmas Day, it's the perfect gift for them."

We wish this pair of angels luck in their new lives and a forever home in the new year! For more positive animal stories, take a look at our collection of the best animal news stories of 2020!

Or tiny little animal friends have a tendency of getting themselves into trouble all the time. Pet owners and pet lovers alike know that. And though normally, it's little things like your cat getting its nail stuck in the curtains or your dogs getting its nose stuck somewhere because puepper just had to try to get that fly, sometimes, things get a lot more dangerous than that, and we have situations where animals truly need us to come to their rescue. 

Every single month, we cover as many stories as we can about these heroes- the people who put everything aside to save the little animals who've gotten themselves a bit too deep into the mud. And every single month, happily, there are too many stories to cover, so we make this little list for everyone, so that we can all give the most deserved appreciation to these heroes. 

We always tell you guys about stories of people saving animals, but sometimes, it's the animals who save us. This time, we're not even talking metaphorically about pets who save us by just being in our lives. No, in this case, a parrot literally saved its owner from a huge housefire. The fire was so bad, the entire house was burnt down, but thanks to Eric - the rescuer parrot - the owner is okay.

You think this year has been strange? Well, it's about to get stranger. Just in time for Halloween month, none other than the devil has returned to Australia. The devil, you ask? Yes, the Tasmanian devil. 

The Tasmanian devil, the world's largest surviving marsupial carnivore, used to live in the mainland of Australia but became extinct on the mainland 3000 thousand years ago. The only place that these devils continued to live was in Tasmania. Not anymore though. Last month, 11 devils were released back into mainland Australia.

"I found a slight pulse"...Check out this funny text conversation between Michella and her very determined dad. Of course, the people on Twitter just loved it and even shared some similar stories of their own.    

The man was walking along the beach in Green Stane near Eyemouth, Scotland, when he disturbed around 50 of the large mammals and their young pups. In order to avoid them, he scrambled up the cliff face and became trapped about three quarters of the way up. However, with the weather worsening, the Eyemouth lifeboat was called out to help and located the man using his head torch. A Coastguard rescue officer was then lowered down the cliff to rescue the angler, who was taken to the lifeboat below back to the town's harbour. People on twitter thought the story was quite funny.  

In a study published by the Science journal, researchers discovered an antibody found in llamas that could become an important component in a universal flu vaccine. Check out what the people on twitter thought about it.