Police began searching for the elderly woman after she was reported missing from her home on Saturday.
During the search, neighbour Tamar Longmuir noticed the 83-year-old woman’s cat was constantly meowing and appeared to be trying to draw attention to the corner of a nearby maize field.
Knowing the close bond that her elderly neighbour has with her cat, Ms Longmuir decided to follow the feline’s lead and was soon able to locate her elderly neighbour, who had fallen 20 metres down a steep embankment and into a ravine.
“The cat is very attached to her, and he was going back and forth in the gateway and meowing, so I decided to go and search the maize field,” Longmuir said.
“Just as I was going to go off the path and start going through the crop, I heard a very faint response to my calling. I then quickly realised my neighbour was down the 70-foot ravine,” she told Sky News.
“She had gone through the barbed wire and was laying in the stream – we think she had been in there for hours,” said Ms Longmuir.
Water rescue specialists were called upon to hoist the elderly woman to safety, and she is now recovering in hospital where she is in good spirits.
According to both authorities and neighbours, things could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t for the elderly woman’s cat, which is named Piran.
“Without the cat waiting at the gate to that field, it could have been hours later that I or anyone else would have checked in there,” Longmuir said.
