LEWISTON – Harry Dostie was sleeping with a snorkel-like tube secured to his face when Shadow the cat prevented a tragedy.

Dostie suffers from sleep apnea and uses a continuous positive airway pressure machine to keep his airways open. Without the machine, there’s a danger that Dostie might stop breathing in his sleep.

Dostie, who works nights, went to bed Wednesday morning after his wife had gone to work. He was sound asleep when Shadow roused him.

“I felt him up by my head. His paw was hitting my cheek,” Dostie said. “He hit me four or five times until I woke up. I thought, ‘Shadow, what do you want?”‘

When Dostie opened his eyes, he saw smoke in the tube of the CPAP machine. “I could smell burning plastic. It was coming through the tube,” Dostie said. “I looked around and saw smoke in the room. The machine itself was smoking.”

Dostie had been breathing in that smoke, which was filling the bedroom. He has been using the CPAP machine since 1994 without a major malfunction. It wasn’t immediately clear what went wrong with the machine.