A tiny kitten who had just joined her new family was at the center of a highly dramatic and dangerous situation Saturday morning. Jesse is thought to have started a fire when she knocked over a candle, and is being praised for waking her family in time for them to escape their smoke filled burning home. There were fears that the little kitten had perished in the fire, but she was safely found by firefighters.
Jesse, who media reports say is just 6 weeks old, came to live with the Rogers family of Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK as 12 year old son Hal’s pet.
A family member returning from a night out left a scented candle burning on a radiator, the Manchester Evening News reports.
When the fire started, Jesse’s meows woke Hal. As smoke and fire filled the home, the family escaped but they lost track of the tiny kitten in the panic.
Lynn Rogers is quoted in the MEN saying: “My husband woke me up and said the house is on fire and I just couldn’t believe it. It’s like something from a film.
“And the smoke was really bad upstairs, my daughter Ellie was hanging out her bedroom window trying to get some clean air to breath.
“We only got [Jesse] on Thursday and my son Hal kept saying ‘oh my god no, she’s dead, she’s dead’. He was just curled up crying.”
After a while, a fireman emerged from the house holding the kitten.
Lynn said: “We all just started screaming when we saw the fireman carrying Jesse in his palm.
“It’s unbelievable that we were all struggling to breath and Jesse, with her tiny lungs, managed to survive the flames and smoke.
“I asked if [the firefighters] could check Jessie over too because she had been inside for so long while the flames and smoke were everywhere.
“They took her heart rate with the same equipment used on us and it was nearly bigger than her whole body.”
