So Monday night we had a bit of a oil fire. Nothing serious, we had watched a Mythbusters recently about how oil fires and water are a nono, so it was smothered with a lid instead. Anyway, I came home for lunch and walked in the door and smelled burnt. I figured it was leftover lingerings of the night before since I had been out of the house and was now just coming back I smelled it more intensely. I was about to wash my hands when Matthew comes up from downstairs and tells me in his rather rare (when he’s not mad at me or someone else) serious voice, to ‘come downstairs, now’. So down we go to the basement and he tells me “She’s stuck in there.” My first thought is, “Oh, the cat managed to run downstairs when he had the door open…but where would she be stuck that has him all grr?”
But oddly enough he pointed to the furnace and handed me a knife. Apparently our hopper of an orange kitten had pulled up a vent cover in the great room, traveled down the tubing, and managed to get herself right on top of the furnace. When it turned itself on in an attempt to keep us warm, Matthew had begun smelling the burnt smell I smelled on coming home, which was apparently not lingerings, but burnt cat hair.
In any case I hopped right up and with superior vertical advantage sliced through the duct tape between the metal pipes and out popped an orange head, which I immediately grabbed and yanked out. Copper had a large black mass of burnt fur on the back of her neck just behind her head and as we took her upstairs to go immediately to the vet I noticed that one of her ears had shrunk around the edge and sort of curled in on itself.
She is spending the night with the vets who commented on how lucky she was that we got her out of there before too much damage appeared to have been done (though apparently with animals burns work a bit differently.) and that she was very sore, on painkillers, and not yet eating or drinking (though they are giving her fluids under the skin). The vet did seem fairly confidant that we’d be able to take her home and care for her here as long as she begins eating again. I’ll find out later this morning.
