"Hero" cat saves owner from drowning

A cat was being hailed as a hero on Wednesday after waking his owner as the yacht they were aboard was sinking.

The vessel was 40 miles off the Western Australian coast when it began taking on water and the cat named Major Tom sprang into action, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Skipper Grant McDonald, who has lived on board his yacht, The Osprey, for six years, was forced to abandon the vessel.

He and Major Tom made it into a life raft and was rescued from the water by a nearby merchant vessel hours later.

McDonald said he was woken by Major Tom at around 5:00 a.m. last Friday.

"He kept head-butting me and got me up, and eventually after checking the wind and doing the normal course check I noticed the bow heavy, heavy in the water ... the whole boat was flooded," he said.

"It was too dark and too dangerous to enter and try and find a leak. I had to make the quick decision to get the cat and get on the life raft as quickly as possible."

McDonald and Major Tom were plucked from the ocean hours later by the Shi Dai 8.

"We lifted Major Tom up on a rope, there was massive swells and I had to grab onto the rope ladder and hope for the best, and then the life raft disappeared 10 meters underneath me and I managed to climb seven metres to the gantry," he said.

"If I hadn't been rescued when I had, within four or five hours I would've been washed up on shore and killed, so I was very, very lucky." Endi