I've been feeling bad that it's been about 3 months since my last posting. A few weeks ago I had the idea of doing weekly postings while Cam is working in St. George. I don't know why, I guess mostly just to document happenings while he is gone. It also came to me that I might find myself in interesting and/or humorous situations while he is gone, because I have never in my life just lived alone. And with him being gone all week, I am pretty much living alone. Cam is one of those people who knows exactly what to do when situations arise, like the swamp cooler not working, pilot lights going out, dishwasher floods, etc. Me? I'm pretty much a spaz at that stuff. I'm usually there handing him tools while he is fixing these things, but I don't really pay attention. Ever since we heard that Cam was going to be working in St. George, I've been worrying that some catastrophe is going to happen at the house. It's funny, I'm not worried about break-ins or anything like that. Our dog, Tosh, is huge and an excellent protector, and I have my 22 pretty much ready to go, I wouldn't hesitate to use it, and I'm a dang good shot. So, nothing has happened in the last 3 weeks because Cam has only been in St. George one day each week, and then there was yesterday......
This is our cat Eddie. I'm including a picture of him because the story starts with him. Eddie is a very large male cat, and the only cat I have that will mark territory. He doesn't always do it, but sometimes if I leave an article of clothing against a certain wall in the bedroom, he will spray it. Monday night, I left a t-shirt and a kitchen towel on the floor by that wall. Sorry, let me back up a bit. The story actually begins about half an hour before Eddie's action. At about 4:30 yesterday morning I woke up to one of the cats jumping around the room. It was Trisha, there was a moth or some other flying bug in the room and she was chasing it. Chasing bugs is one of Trisha's favorite things to do. It's annoying, but I'm used to it and can sleep through it. So I fell back asleep. At 5am I wake up to this buzzing noise. Before I opened my eyes I thought "Trisha must have caught her bug", it sounded like a loud fly buzzing or something. Then I realized that was way too loud for a bug and I opened my eyes. I see Eddie running from his "spray wall" towards the bed. There is an outlet on that wall and blue sparks are coming out of the outlet and a loud buzzing sound is coming from it. Eddie's spray had gone directly into the outlet. I immediately fly out of bed and stood there looking at the sparks trying to decide what to do. The first thing I thought was "throw some water on it", then I remembered hearing never try to put out an electrical fire with water, because it is usually liquid that starts them in the first place! Then I remembered we had a fire extinguisher in the hall closet. By this time smoke is coming out of the outlet too. I run back in the bedroom with the fire extinguisher. I've never used one before. I kept pushing down on what was obviously the lever that releases the white stuff, but nothing was happening. The lever wouldn't even push down. I think "it's broken!" My worry is turning into panick. Then I decided there must be something you have to do in order to make it work. I start looking at the extinguisher and notice a hand grenade looking key going through the lever. I pull out the key and push down on the lever and it worked! I spray the outlet, and it seems to have worked. The sparks and smoke stop. I was a little relieved, but I kept feeling the wall around the outlet to see if I feel any heat in the wall. I don't feel any heat, then I hear a loud pop and suddenly sparks just start shooting out of the outlet. More than before! I couldn't believe it. Then it hit me, maybe you're not supposed to use a fire extinguisher on electrical fires. I grab the extinguisher and frantically look for directions. I notice 3 pictures on it, one of a garbage can with flames coming out, one of flames and a gasoline can, and one of flames and an electrical cord. What does this mean? I look to see if there is one of those lines going through the picture, you know, the red circle with the line meaning "don't" or whatever. I don't see the line, so I figure it's telling me it's okay to use, so I start spraying again. That white stuff goes everywhere! And it doesn't help that the ceiling fan was on and circulating the stuff all over the room. This time the sparks stop, but smoke keeps coming out of the outlet. I'm picturing the fire going up the wire and catching the insulation on fire. I'm convinced that any second now I'm going to see that wall just burst into flames. During all this I noticed that my two male cats had run out of the room, but my two girls are probably under the bed. So while I'm spraying extinguisher stuff, I'm also stomping my foot to get them out from under the bed. Stomping my foot works for some reason, and I see both girls run out of the room. I know my cats, and know all 4 of them ran to the basement, which means they are pretty much as far from where the fire will start as they can be.
The sparks had stopped, but lots of smoke was still coming out of the outlet. I spent a few seconds deciding whether or not to call 911. I keep hoping the smoke will stop, but it doesn't. I've never had to call 911 to get myself out of a jam. I've called it a couple of times when I've witnessed a car accident, and once or twice when I worked the front desk of a hotel. One time I remember it was because a housekeeper walked in on someone od'ing from heroine. Anyway, I decide I probably should call 911. At that point only about 5 minutes had passed, and I realized I was only wearing a shirt. I decide that if this is going to turn into something major I better put some pants on. I went to grab the pajama pants I bought for Cam for Christmas one year. He doesn't wear them, and I've kind of adopted them. Then I thought better of it, because what if there is a huge fire and neighbors and news people show up, I don't want to be in pajama pants. So I put on a pair of jeans, and call 911. The dispatcher goes through all the preliminary stuff like my address and name, then she asks what the emergency is. I told her my cat pee'd into an electrical outlet and sparks and smoke have been shooting out the outlet. I told her I've sprayed it twice with an extinguisher, but smoke is still coming out. Then suddenly, sparks come shooting out again. This time they are shooting out about 3 feet. It's as if one of those TNT fireworks is in my outlet. I kind of yelped, she could hear the noise and asked if that was the sparks she was hearing. I told her it was, and she told me to get out of the house.
I grab Tosh and go ouside. The dispatcher tells me the fire trucks will be there any time. Then she tells me kind of hesitantly, "I have to send notes to the firemen. This was started by urine?" I said "yes, my cat sprayed the wall and it went in the outlet." Right then, I could hear the sirens in the distance. It's about 5:10am and I'm praying they will turn off the sirens when they get in the neighborhood. I didn't want a crowd. And I especially didn't want our neighbor across the street, Luis, to come out. Luis and his wife Adrianna have become pretty good friends of ours. Problem is, they don't speak much English. We can get by okay talking to eachother, and they have a 9 year old daughter, Julia, that speaks both English and Spanish, so she works as translator a lot. Luis knows that Cam is out of town, and Cam asked him to kind of keep an eye on the house. I keep wondering "how in the world am I going to explain this to Luis?" I picture myself saying the word "gato", then lifting my leg up (I mean that is the universal symbol for an animal peeing right?), and then I got stuck on how to describe "outlet" and "sparks" through hand gestures. ( I'm not kidding either, those exact thoughts really went through my head) I just hoped that if Luis came out, Julia would come out with him to translate. Just then the firetruck turns the corner, no sirens, but lots of lights. Then one comes through the neighborhood the other way, so I've got two of them in front of my house. While I was figuring out how to explain to Luis what happened, I was also thinking of my cats. I figured if there was a fire, some of the firemen can rescue the cats. I mean, that's part of their job, right? It's crazy how in situations like that, your brain can think of a bunch of different things at the same time in a linear way.
The firemen jump out of the truck and 3 of them follow me inside. I took them to the bedroom. Thankfully there is no fire, and the smoke had stopped. They have their axes with them, and I'm sure any second now they are going to start hacking through the wall. I didn't care, Cam could fix it. Instead, they pull out these gadgets with a laser and they start pointing the lasers on the wall and ceiling. The lasers are reading the temperature. They spend a few minutes doing that, meanwhile 4 more firemen have joined us. One of them goes back outside and tells the other firetruck they can leave, and then he comes back. They assure me there is no fire in the wall. They tell me the outlet is a bit hot still, but not hot enough to start a fire. I apologized to them and told them I hope I hadn't wasted their time. They assured me I did the right thing. They also told me it was a good thing we had an extinguisher, or it could have resulted in a house fire. They said some huge percentage of house fires are electrical, I don't remember the number, but it was pretty high.
By the time the firemen and I entered the house, the white extinguisher stuff had pretty much spread through the entire house. It just orbits in the air, it was all down the hall and into the living room and kitchen. When they determined there wasn't going to be a fire they said they would help me air out the house. I really just wanted them to leave, because I was still afraid Luis was going to come over. I told them it wasn't necessary, I could just turn on the swamp cooler and air it out. But they insisted on staying. So they went around the house opening windows and then they brought in these big gasoline powered fans and started airing out the house. The front door was propped open, the whole house was wide open. And for those that know me well, you know that I'm a freak about keeping my cats inside. I have very strict rules about closing doors behind you and not opening windows unless there is a very secure screen, etc. So, I was picturing my cats, especially Pedro, taking the opportunity to run outside. But, I was still feeling like I had wasted their time, and some of them looked like they had obviously just woken up to come to my house, that I didn't have the heart to ask them to close the door. I was really hoping my cats were so freaked out that they just stayed hidden in the basement. The firemen spent about 10 minutes airing out the house, they made sure I was okay, then they left. It was about 5:45 when they left. I looked across the street, Luis' house was still totally dark. I had adverted that whole awkward situation. And thankfully, no other neighbors had gathered in front of my house. So, either all my neighbors were still asleep, or they just don't care.
As soon as they left, I closed most of the windows and turned the swamp cooler on vent. My priority right then was to make sure all the cats were still in the house. I went into the kitchen and opened up a can of wet cat food, a noise that is sure to get their attention. As soon as I opened the can, my girls, Pedro and Trisha came running up the stairs. I was so relieved. They were the one's I was most worried about. My boys, Eddie and Onan are so skittish, I knew for sure they wouldn't have gone outside. But the girls, I wasn't so sure. Onan eventually came upstairs, but Eddie didn't. I didn't really care at that time, I was pretty angry with him. I got him and Onan when I divorced my first husband, and it crossed my mind while all this was going on that maybe I should track down my first husband and tell him to take Eddie back. I would never do that, but it did cross my mind.
So I fed the cats, and the whole time I'm just shaking. The whole morning so far just seemed so surreal. There is nothing worse than waking up and panick is your first emotion. In a mere 15 minutes time, I had woken up to sparks coming out of an outlet, using a fire extinguisher twice, worrying my house is going to burn down, calling 911, how to explain this to my Mexian neighbor, and two firetrucks in front of my house. Most mornings, my main dilemma is whether to warm up the coffee leftover from the day before, or make a new pot. I called my work and told them I wasn't going to make it that day. I didn't bother telling them why, I didn't think they would believe me. I had called Cam just before the firetrucks arrived, he didn't answer, I called him again after the firemen left, he didn't answer again. I didn't leave messages, because I didn't want to freak him out. I was still worried, so I went in the bedroom and laid at the foot of the bed, so I could be as close to the outlet as possible, and fell asleep. I woke up around 7:30 and called Cam again. This time he answered. I asked him if he didn't notice I had called him twice already. He said he did. He was asleep the first time I called and in the shower the second time. By the time he saw the missed calls he thought I was at work, so he didn't call me back. He was all nonchalant, he thought I was just calling him to say "hi". I explained what had happened, and he felt so bad he hadn't called me back. He could not believe what had happened. He immediately stepped up and said he was going to call the electricians his company works with and get them over to the house, etc. He kept apologizing for not returning my calls. I could tell he felt pretty helpless being out of town, but he was going to do what he could.
Cam made his calls and at about 10:00 our friend Andy came over. He's not an electrician, but does have some experience. Andy noticed it was strange that the whole incident didn't trip the breaker. So he and I, through turning off several breakers, found the right one, and turned it off. Andy removed the outlet and put in a new one. Then a few hours later, our electrician friend, Lanny, came over and double checked everything. He said our breaker box is really old, in fact they don't even make those type of breakers anymore. That is probably why the breaker didn't trip. So he is going to switch out the entire box this weekend.
So, that's the story. I was pretty jumpy all day yesterday. Every little noise made me jump. I think I came down with temporary OCD, because all day, every couple of minutes, I felt the walls around the outlet for heat. But, I did learn a couple of lessons. Put those child protector outlet things in all the empty outlets (thanks for the suggestion Cat, I bought some today), and make sure you have fire extinguishers in your house! If you don't have one, go get one. I not only successfully prevented a house fire, but I also prevented myself getting on the local news. One of my life goals, and I'm totally serious about this, is to not be on the news! I mean, if I save someone's life or something like that fine, but I never want to be the person on the news that viewers can kind of laugh at and/or feel sorry for. If my house had burned down, what would have been the headline? "house burns down because cat pees in outlet?" I will not be that person! Oh yeah, that reminds me. In the afternoon, Eddie finally showed up. The poor guy is singed on his belly, so he must have gotten shocked by the sparks when he sprayed. When I saw that, I remembered hearing a loud meow before I heard the buzzing sound. I did a little post about this on Facebook yesterday, at first everyone was quite concerned, then the comments got funny. My brother-in-law Rob had the best headline, "there was a house fire in Kearns today. The investigating fireman on the scene determined the cause of the fire to be a cat urinating on a wall outlet. The only injury reported is to the suspected cat…." And my brother, Matt, just found the whole story too funny that you can't come up with jokes, it's too funny the way it is.
One last comment. My bedroom was covered in fire extinguisher stuff. And that stuff really stinks! Especially combined with the smell of burning cat urine.
Here is a picture of the fire extinguisher, the t-shirt that got pee'd on and Andy taking out the outlet. If you look closely at Andy's foot, you can see the hand grenade key from the extinguisher.
Here is a picture of the outlet. So many sparks came out of it that they melted the plastic around the holes. 
