Guess what?  Chloe alerted me to a fire today!

I was home alone working in the office upstairs, and she kept getting up and going to the office door and sniffing the air.  I’d call her back to lay down and kept working… I guess my nose isn’t what hers is!  She did this at least twice.  Finally, she came and sat in front of me and then suddenly jumped up with both paws in my lap.  My balance is so poor, we’ve never allowed Chloe to do this.  So I was really startled!  I said, “What’s wrong, Chloe?”

She ran to the office door and then looked back at me.  I thought, “Gee she really has to ‘hurry up’ (pee)!”  So I followed her downstairs.  She stopped at the laundry room door, which isn’t normal.  She usually goes clear to the backdoor and waits patiently for me to let her out.

I asked her to “move”, and looked in the laundry room… and I could already smell smoke!  There was a thin wisp of smoke coming out from under our old fridge in which we keep drinks.  I ran to the electrical outlet, unplugged it, and then opened the back door.  Chloe ran outside and I started moving things away from the fridge.  As I moved the fridge, lint that was under it kept sparking so I took some wet paper towels and drug it out.  (I have a nice burn on my thumb now.)  I think as oxygen got to the dirt, lint and cat hair under there it started to really “catch”.  I was scared to death it was going to catch fire.  The fridge is over 20 years old, so it’s no surprise it has decided to quit.

I now know I need a smoke alarm in our laundry room.  There’s one in almost every room of the house except there!

I called Chloe back into the house, and she watched me clean up.  It was a mess!  The freezer part was completely thawed out (so it must have stopped working a day or more ago).  I think the only thing that kept it from really bursting into flames, was that there was very little oxygen getting to it.  I have no idea how she knew something was wrong.  I could only smell it when I got downstairs!

We’d been working on the smoke alarm alert upstairs, but never with smoke… nor working on it at all downstairs.  I’m still not sure how she knew something was wrong!  I guess she just realized to alert me to things I’m not reacting too!

Anyway, Terry came right home and pronounced the fridge “dead”.

I’m so proud of her!

Denise Portis
©2008 Hearing Loss Diary