Last night, my handsome husband cooked me a fantastic dinner to celebrate my birthday. In the middle of eating, my cat leapt onto the dining table, snitched a slice of steak and bolted for the other side of the table. In doing so, he brushed up against one of the candles and set the fur on his flank and hind leg on fire, but he was so intent on his juicy prize that he didn’t even notice.
I ran my hand over him which put out the flames, took away the steak, and shooed him off the table. I think about 1/4" of the top of each little fur strand burned in an area about 5" in diameter. Nice little drama for the b-day dinner.
That happened to our cat once. This one. It was during an ice storm and we lost power. My husband and I lit a bunch of candles around the house and my husband put one on top of the dryer. The cat hopped up there and scorched his tail. We couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from until the lights came back on (briefly) and we saw him laying in the dining room with a blackened tail. At least he didn’t light anything else on fire.
Our youngest Photo Storage]Tilly will swat at that which she deems unsavoury of character. It doesn’t really matter what it is. If she decides doesn’t like it, regardless of whether it actually gave offense, she’ll swat it.
Such was the case in her first encounter with a candle. She didn’t quite know what to make of the dancing, glowing thing on top of the small pillar. She tried to sniff it, but backed off when she determined it might be a bit hot. It should never be said she doesn’t give enough chances though, because she tried again, gingerly bringing her little nose closer to the flame. She got a bit too close though, and realized it was entirely too hot for her liking. Not enough to burn or cause pain, but enough to make her mind up about whether or not it would be friends with her. It wouldn’t. It was therefore swattable. She brought her paw up gingerly – for she was smart enough to understand one ought to engage in such enterprises cautiously to see how it will react before getting serious about beating it up – and gave it a test swat. Fur singed. Worse, melted wax adhered to one of her footpads. The fiery stick thing was mad and it did not like to be trifled with. Tilly meowled, jumped off the table and ran to parts unknown, presumably to assess what sort of damage the creature’s spit caused to her tender paw.
We blew the candle out later that night and retired to bed. We awoke the next morning and found the candle tipped over on the floor. Tilly had killed it. She was quite smug, too.
I like baths. When I have a bath, I have candles, a book, something to drink, music - the whole cheesey works. My cat liked to sit on the edge of the tub and swat at the bubbles. She was always curious of candles; usually the heat drove her away before she could get too close. On this occasion, she got too close, burned off half of her whiskers, and fell headlong on top of me. In the tub.
If you’ve ever seen a cat that was burned or a cat that was underwater, you can imagine the amount of panicked claw wounds I had across my torso. She had a very difficult time maintaining her dignity as she stalked out of the bathroom.
Needless to say, my cat no longer gives a damn about the bubbles.
My brother’s moronic beastie Phoenix has never been the full quid. We had just moved interstate to a lease home while we looked for a new house and I was turning on the gas stove, which Phoenix had never seen (we got her after a house fire, in which we lost my brother’s last cat - he has the worst luck with cats). I had turned on the gas, pushed the cat off the counter, away from the stove and mum called my name as I pressed the pilot light.
The stupid thing had jumped back onto the counter as I hit the pilot. The gas was on medium but it had been on for a few seconds. Phoenix jumped/fell off the counter and ran for the back door and got her claw stuck. I wrapped her in a towel and checked her out. No whiskers and no significant damage done her eyes, they were just a tad dry. Within a few hours she was fine, though miffed at her lack of width perception. Vet okayed her the next morning.
The same cat sniffed a candle, only to lose half of her whiskers again.
