An Australian woman was awoken by her hissing cat early Sunday to find a python wrapped around her two-year-old daughter.

Tess Guthrie, a 22-year-old from Lismore, New South Wales, discovered the 6-foot python wrapped three times around her daughter's arm.

"I thought I was having a nightmare," Guthrie told a local television news station. "It was only because the cat was hissing that I woke up and saw the snake with its body wrapped around my daughter Zara’s arm."

The toddler was sleeping in the bed with Guthrie, who pried the snake off her. But before she could, the non-venomous python bit the infant three times on her left hand.

"In my head I was just going through this unbelievable terror, and my thought was that it was going to actually kill her at first, because it was wrapped so tight," Guthrie told the Brisbane Times. "Her little arm was bleeding really bad from the bites, and all I could feel was blood and Zara was screaming by that stage, and I was in hysterics because it was such a shocking thing to wake up to. It was just terrifying."