inauspicio.us

so the cat caught fire. not today: today we have no cat. per our lease, we are allowed a cat but only if he pays a two hundred dollar security deposit. not having met such a well-funded cat at this point, apartment fifteen does not currently have one. my family used to have a cat, back in the day, but we also owned a fire extinguisher. so if, god forbid, the cat had ever caught fire, we would have been able to put it out fairly quickly, and more importantly, we would have been able to put it out without debate.

last winter, when i was still working at chili’s, i came home late one night reeking of Awesome Blossom to find my roomate carissa wiping a fine yellow dust off of everything in the kitchen. our apartment smelled overpoweringly of charred lemon-scented cleanser and the formerly white toaster oven sat in an open garbage bag in the kitchen, charred, forlorn, and covered with yellow dust. it was obviously going to be necessary to tread lightly in this situation, but you can’t just avoid mentioning what was clearly a fire. so i eventually inquired after the events of the evening. it turned out to have all started with a taco shell in the toaster oven, which had caught fire much more dramatically than is usual. once the flames were past the top of the toaster oven and were licking against teh cabinet above, carissa wisely decided to haul out the heavy rtillery in the form of our hand-held fire extinguisher. the fire extinguisher turned out to have been filled with yellow chalk (who knew the main weapon of the elementary school teacher was such a potent firefighting tool). subsequently, the fire was out, the only other change being the contents of the fire extinguisher and the kitchen changing places. the fire extinguisher, which had been filled with yellow chalk, was empty, and the kitchen, which had been empty, was filled with yellow chalk. later, we got a new toaster oven.

and it wasnt too long before that that i found two kittens by the side of the road while i was out biking one day with my friend ben. he wasn’t allowed to have pets in his apartment, but i wasn’t allowed to have them in my dormitory. so he kept them for a few days, and then gave them to me. i made them a little bed in my eight by ten foot single-suddenly-turned-triple room, and they were pretty content to explore behind my desk and not make any trouble. i was lucky during this time to not have any college security officers notice that i was keeping illicit cats in my room: the fine was $100 per day per cat.

everything was completely copacetic until late one thursday night. i was sitting in the common room, reading sociology, when suddenly i caught a whiff of what smelled like burning hair. i ran back to my room where i saw tom, the dumber of the two cats, had fallen asleep against the heater and caught fire. two of my suitemates had also smelt the commotion and come running: heated debate ensued. we first thought of putting him out with a blanket, but he was pretty small and delicate and we were afraid of crushing or suffocating him. we needed to put him out with water so i picked him up with a towel and carried him into the bathroom. we couldnt get him to stay still in the sink, and the shower couldnt contain him in that frenzied state. finally, as i was really starting to freak out, i pushed open the door to one of the toilet stalls and just tossed him in. with a splash, our problems were solved.

poor tom never went near the radiator again.