ALBANY, Oregon (KGW) - An Oregon woman says she's alive today because her cat helped detect a lump in her breast.
Mia was a rescue cat. "The cat was in such bad shape when we got her,” said Michelle Pearson, who adopted the cat at the Humane Society.
Mia has been a form of therapy for Michelle as she battles breast cancer. "I am in the middle of the fight at the time."
A fight Michelle says she might have lost by now, had Mia not done what she did back in June.
"All of a sudden out of nowhere she just got up on my chest and she sniffed that breast and then looked in my face,” Michelle recalls, “sniffed the spot again and looked in my face and I tried to shove her off, and she came back up and just laid down on that right breast. And she looked at me like 'I'm trying to tell you something.’"
"I was there, felt the lump and said ‘you should probably go in,’" said Will Pearson.
A few days later, "Yea you get that phone call that you have cancer and I go ‘what?!’ No one in my family has had cancer," said Michelle.
She had stage two breast cancer and was off to the start of a long road of treatment and recovery.
But, "Because we caught this early, my prognosis is much better."
"We've always loved the cat,” Will said, “but now the cat gets anything it wants, whatever it wants as much as it wants."
Specially trained dogs have detected cancer in humans. Mia has no such training.
Michelle said, "People look at me like “you're crazy.’"
Will said, "The cat -- whether it was by chance or whether or not the cat did see something - it caused her to feel there so, in my mind the cat saved her life.”