My House Caught on Fire!

Last week, my sister Michelle and I had to go somewhere, and we stayed out late.  while we were gone, my son Jeremy accidentally locked himself outside when he got home from work, so he sat on the front porch to wait for us.

When Michelle and I got home, the three of us walked inside together, and we immediately noticed a bad smell.  Because all of us were gone all day, we were afraid that one of the cats may have launched a mutiny and used the bathroom somewhere other than their litter boxes.  But the more we smelled, the more we all decided it didn’t smell like that kind of foul smell.

It was late, so after we cleaned the litter boxes and changed our clothes, we made dinner and watched a little television before bed.  An hour or so later, as Michelle was in her bedroom getting ready for bed, I heard her scream.  When I went in to see what happened, she told me that something black caught her eye and she was afraid that our black cat Zsa Zsa had lost a large tuft of fur in a fight.  (The other cats tend to pick on poor Zsa Zsa when we’re not around.)  When she bent over to pick it up, however, she noticed that her surge protector was stuck to the carpet on top of the “black fur.”  She then pulled on it and realized that it was not cat fur at all, but that her surge protector had apparently caught on fire!  (By the way, only her computer and monitor were plugged in.  Thankfully, they both still work.)

I have no idea why our smoke detector didn’t go off, and I know it works because it went off just the week before when I had some candles lit.  Luckily, the fire must have put itself out, or perhaps heat and smoke was as far as it got.  And thankfully all our belongings — and more importantly our cats — were not caught in a blazing home!  We still have no idea how or why this happened, but we do intend to write to the manufacturer of the surge protector company and see what they have to say.  How scary is this?

Time to talk:  Have you ever personally known someone this has happened to?  What do you think made this happen?  Have you even known someone whose house caught fire?