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Much to say, little energy to say it with.
Might as well start with the fire.
Yes, we're fine, as is our collective set of material goods; it wasn't even our apartment that was the burny-thing. The apartment building, however, is a converted junior high school, which means very high ceilings, very large window, and one of those skull-rattling, follicle-shearing fire alarm systems that can animate the recently dead like Bunny Breckinridge in glitter paint. It's gone off before, usually as a false alarm, but we're still supposed to evacuate, which is fine when it's not snow-encrusted and Fahrenheit-negative outside. Unfortunately, last night, it was. Marvy.
The first problem was a logistical one: we had to figure out how to get both cats into the same solo-occupancy cat carrier (a nice trick, since getting one of them in is an exercise in masochism, and we have the scars on our arms to prove it). We snatched Lucy the Small and Feisty and stuffed her in without much trouble, but this meant that Sunny the Older and More Tokin' got to see what was going down, and wanted none of it. She finally made a tactical error (classic blunder—she's unaware that just because her front haunches are under the futon doesn't mean her tuchus is necessarily covered), we dropped her on top of her adopted sister, and trundled them down four flights of stairs.
And no, it wasn't a false alarm. We could smell the smoke outside out doors.
It turned out that a couple of guys had managed to start a grease fire on their stove, which they had pretty much already dealt with, but we still had to wait at the proto-Siberian beach party that was the building's front stoop with two no-less-miserable-than-us kitty-cats until the fire trucks (a) arrived, (b) figured out the right door to go in, (c) found the room with the former fire, and (d) gave the okay to go back in.
It took them nearly an hour to do this. The sad part was, it took us a half-hour before we thought to get in the car and crank the heater. *sigh*
Might as well start with the fire.
Yes, we're fine, as is our collective set of material goods; it wasn't even our apartment that was the burny-thing. The apartment building, however, is a converted junior high school, which means very high ceilings, very large window, and one of those skull-rattling, follicle-shearing fire alarm systems that can animate the recently dead like Bunny Breckinridge in glitter paint. It's gone off before, usually as a false alarm, but we're still supposed to evacuate, which is fine when it's not snow-encrusted and Fahrenheit-negative outside. Unfortunately, last night, it was. Marvy.
The first problem was a logistical one: we had to figure out how to get both cats into the same solo-occupancy cat carrier (a nice trick, since getting one of them in is an exercise in masochism, and we have the scars on our arms to prove it). We snatched Lucy the Small and Feisty and stuffed her in without much trouble, but this meant that Sunny the Older and More Tokin' got to see what was going down, and wanted none of it. She finally made a tactical error (classic blunder—she's unaware that just because her front haunches are under the futon doesn't mean her tuchus is necessarily covered), we dropped her on top of her adopted sister, and trundled them down four flights of stairs.
And no, it wasn't a false alarm. We could smell the smoke outside out doors.
It turned out that a couple of guys had managed to start a grease fire on their stove, which they had pretty much already dealt with, but we still had to wait at the proto-Siberian beach party that was the building's front stoop with two no-less-miserable-than-us kitty-cats until the fire trucks (a) arrived, (b) figured out the right door to go in, (c) found the room with the former fire, and (d) gave the okay to go back in.
It took them nearly an hour to do this. The sad part was, it took us a half-hour before we thought to get in the car and crank the heater. *sigh*
