I lit a fire and was burning some papers in the fireplace when one of my cats decided to check out what I was doing. They are all semi-interested in the fireplace and we've never worried about that too much. Once they stick their heads close to the fire, the heat usually freaks them out enough that they stay a good distance away. 8 of my cats are short haired cats, but the 9th one is a Maine Coon mix. I'm not sure how to classify a Maine Coon as far as hair goes. Its not quite long haired, so maybe he's considered a medium haired. I'm not sure. All I know is that his fur is wild and fluffy and all over the place. In fact, this is what he looks like:
Notice how well the snow sticks to his crazy fur in that first picture.
So Moses hopped up onto the fire place and watched me poke at it for a while from a fairly safe distance. He was on the hearth, but he was being good and just looking at the fire. THEN he decided to turn around to face me. In the process of turning around, his big fluffy tail went INTO the fireplace and INTO the fire!! I screamed as soon as I saw his tail touch the fire. Now, if you know Moses, screaming is a bad, bad idea because he has the tendency to spaz out psychotically when he is scared. Once he walked into a plastic bag, got it stuck on his head and he ran around the house for a few minutes at what seemed like 500 miles an hour, with the plastic bag trailing behind him like a superman cape. We couldn't help him get out of it because he was freaking out so badly.
So anyway, I screamed. Bad idea. Moses freaked out like he did with the plastic bag. I'm not usually a quick person when reflexes are involved, yet somehow I must have also been freaked out enough to grab him in a split second and stop him from running around the house with his tail on fire. Thankfully only a VERY small portion of fur on his tail was burning and I quickly put it out with my hand (I was too freaked out to think about that being a bad idea). Thankfully my hand only stung a bit and I was fine. The burned fur fell right off and I'm pretty sure that the stupid cat had no idea that his tail was even burning! The only thing he was scared about was the fact that I screamed!
So basically, I had this image in my head of Moses running around the house like he did when he got stuck in the plastic bag. In the process his tail would continue to burn and he would spread the fire around the house too. So I am thankful to say that I just managed to avoid losing my house to a fire started by a cat, and I saved Moses and myself from a trip to Mt. Vernon to see the emergency vet.
If anyone ever tells me that life with cats is boring, I will have to vehemently disagree.
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