Cat credited with discovering owner's lung cancer

Now recovering from surgery to remove cancer from his lung, Kionel Adams, 59, of Edmonton is crediting his eight-year-old feline friend Tiger for alerting him and his family doctor to a mass in his lung.

"He would climb into bed and take his paw and drag it down my left side - he was adamant there was something there," he said."And it was right where the cancer was."

Adams, who has suffered from bronchitis, asthma and emphysema, had showed no symptoms of lung cancer before his cat's bizarre examination.



But about seven months ago, after mentioning the cat's strange behaviour to his family doctor, he was referred to a specialist who caught the disease at stage one in his left lung. "They did an X-ray, they spotted something on the left side," he said.

To get rid of the cancer, doctors removed a piece of his lung about the size of a pop can that had been shredded in half. And now Adams is heralding Tiger as a hero for potentially saving his life.

"I think if he hadn't done the pawing part it could have gone on for another five, six months undetected," he said.