My Cat Discovered Fire {or we can't have too many cat threads}

My cat just discovered the joys of lounging in front of the wood stove.
We have only had about four fires in the wood stove this year and before this I was afraid with my son being too little.

Today she found the best seat in the house.

So my poor kitty has had to wait 13 years to learn what so many other cats already know, a wood fire is wonderfully warm.

This little furball is only about 6 pounds and sitting on my shoulder as I type.

Jim

I was afraid there would be a link to a cat on fire, not near fire - whew.

Cute kitty!

Thank Og there were pics in the OP.

As long as your cat doesn’t try to see what fire smells like…they lose whiskers that way.

If Velcro takes to the stove any more closely, you may have to change his name to Vulcan.

Her name, I mean… :rolleyes:

She has spent a large portion of her life inhabiting her human’s laps & shoulders. When we are not around she settles for the Comfy Sunspots of course.
But the aura of contentment from her today was quite remarkable. She looked like she was in heaven.

Her name was suppose to be Borealis as our older cat at the time was Aurora. But after she kept climbing people and proved very friendly the Velcro nickname kind of stuck.

Jim

I had a cat named Velcro once, several years ago. Her name was originally something else but the Velcro name stuck like she did.

My youngest kitten, Pi, discovered fire a couple months ago in the form of a scented candle. I caught him just as he was sniffing the lighted candle. He singed most of his whiskers and eyebrows on one side. He’s also rather fond of the stove - when it’s on. I constantly shoo him away while I am cooking on the gas burners but one time when I was baking i left the kitchen and I came back in to find him sleeping on the stovetop. When the oven is on the stove top gets extremely hot but it didn’t bother him.

My sister had a cat that as he go older he would sleep closer and closer to the wood stove. (They have a large one) By the time he was 20 he would actually go under the stove. :eek: I don’t understand how he could survive that. Cats appear to have a very high heat tolerance.

Jim

My cat waved his tail over a candle once. Flaming kitty running through the house! We now only burn enclosed candles.

Ah yes. Recently, Cuervo discovered the joys of warming himself in front of the fireplace also.

I almost never burn candles. One of the kittens wondered what is this bright ligh-MEOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW

Singed cat hair stinks too.

This is one of the many reasons cats keep us as pets. That and we don’t smell as bad as chimps. :wink:

Jim

We had a cat who used to like to sleep near our wood stove. And then one day she got too close and touched it (with a paw, I think) and got burned. After that, she’d never get close enough to really get the benefits of the radient heat.

Ah yes, the wonders of cats discovering fire…

When I lived at a house with a small wood burning stove, I’d use it relatively frequently. One day as I was puttering around in the room, I noticed my cat sitting on the lip of the stove, tail flicking back and forth. I didn’t think anything of it at first, until…

sniff, sniff Whew, smells like singed hai…

Yes, she was letting her tail flick in and out of the fire and not noticing a thing. Eventually she bored of sitting in front of the fire and wandered off, tail slightly singed.


<< What did you do to the cat? It looks half dead. —Schrodinger’s wife >>

When I was young my parents had a large fireplace in their home. One of our cats decided fire was its friend and would actually lie down next to the fire inside the fireplace to enjoy the heat.

Whereas I was afraid this would be about a cat learning how to start fires, like early man did. As part of their plot to take over as the dominant species (along with the opposable tumb, I’ve had a series of six toed cats and I’m convinced this a a conscious effort to grow something that will open a cat food can).

So I’m (temporarily) relieved.

I’ve got a nifty contraption that looks like a open treasure chest. It holds two candles. Works like a charm! I can even leave the room to use the bathroom without worrying about feline fireballs.

While that was the humorous intent of my thread title or something similar in feeling, you have already missed out on the fact they don’t need to develop an opposable thumb.
As far as they are concerned they have been guiding and breeding humans for service purposes for nearly 6000 years. :wink:

Mr. Goob & Kalhoun: I am not sure why, but we have never had a candle problem. Not that we leave them burning often, but the cats have not played around or with the candles. I guess every cat is different.
My first cat Aurora loved to play with, Shread and unroll the Toilet paper. The cats we have now never touch it. Aurora use to also carry Beanie Babies around like they were kittens. She was kind of a weird kitty but a very good Mouser.

Current cats, can’t mouse at all, they point them out and leave it up to me. *I think they have trained me better. * :wink:

Jim

I burning your cat?

Cat burnination can be romantic, though…no, really! Not long after my wife and I started dating, I was at her place when her gray kitty (ironically named Smoke) caught fire. While she was on the phone, just around the corner in the kitchen, Smoke was on the sofa table near a scented candle. Smoke turned around, and the flame ignited the hair on her left haunches. I looked over just as it happened, and apparently made some kind of shouting noise. Before the cat even knew what was going on, I had her under my arm, blowing out the flames on her ass. Alerted by my yelp, my wife-to-be came back into the room to see me blowing on Smoke’s smoking butt, the smell of burnt cat hair in the air. Soot, Smoke’s male counterpart, took a greater-than-usual interest in sniffing her butt for a while as she pouted. I got to be the hero, the mighty extinguisher of cats.

We now use candle warmers instead of flames.

I blowing your cats butt?