My Cat Set My House On Fire!

[dgwebster]

so the missus is at home, got the kids here having a nice afternoon. When suddenly, under the fish tank, there is a bang, flash then a fire under the fish tank

I came home from work to discover the cat had piddled on an extension strip which has the lights, external filter & air pump plugged into it. It used to be attached underneath the tank unit upside down, but got pulled down and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet. So the #101## slowly worked its way between a live and neutral pin and eventually shorted it.

If there is one thing, im blood glad it was the £10 air pump that the shorting happened, resulting in only that unit being destroyed and not the £80 filter i only received last week!!

But heck did it scare the crap outta the missus. I have now had to purchase an external socket protecter, the sealed units you get for installing connections outdoors. Into that there is an inbuilt RCD and the line is also surge protected on top of that.

End result: a lesson that explained ANYTHING really can happen.

I can just imagine norwich union on that claim though:

"Hi I need to make a claim on my home insurance"
"what happened?"
"My cat set my house on fire"
"#28### off"

 

[silverrabbit]

Wow... all I can say is BAD CAT!!! Good for future reference though, at least someone was home to put out the fire.

Take care

 

[dgwebster]

yup. its a sad state of affair. we are in private rent and have old fuse wire style leccy box. If it had been a new style RCD, would have tripped without a problem, but the landlord would never replace it unless forced to. still, at least as you say there was someone home and none of the more critical equipment was damaged.

 

[Loops]

OH MY GOD!! Anything can happen!!

 

[Haych]

wow that was lucky!

and naughty kitty!