One night at our house with my mother, sister, 4 cats and 1 dog, we were fast asleep, when one of our cats came next to my bed and started to scream loudly; which he does when he plays with his favorite ball so I thought nothing of it and went back to sleep.
Two minutes later he screamed again and I got worried about him, and I sat up and looked at him and said Bandit are you o.k. bubba? He just stared at me like I should know something, about that time I smelled smoke and looked out my bedroom door and saw our living room in flames.
The first thing I did was panic, what you’re not supposed to do. My family had just installed storm shutters on our bedroom windows, after all, our Louisiana hurricanes and we had to tried them out, but they lock on the outside, thats when I realized we could not escape from any windows.
I ran to the other bedrooms screaming for my mother and sister to get up and call 911 then looking in our living room from the hall, I knew that was our only way to get these animals and us out safely.
We did just in time, ran through the flames, my sister running back in and out getting every animal out, that is the fire fighters jobs, but it was our first fire and we had no plan (everyone should do a fire drill, trust me it saves lives).
I do want to thank our cat Bandit, who without him we would not have made it out, so thank you our brave cat that we love so much!
My only question is: aren’t dogs supposed to bark and wake you up when theres a fire? lol, well we still love our dog, bless his heart he was scared and I guess all 5 of the animals voted Bandit to do it !
Hazel Hebert Hayes
Lake Charles, LA