at four am on wednesday morning i woke to the low thump of someone pounding on a door or wall. our house is a duplex and while voices don’t carry through the heavy stucco walls, thumps and bumps do, and it’s not uncommon to hear our neighbors thumping about. but this was the sound of someone pounding on the front door of the other unit. i saw ben’s head lift off the pillow and realized it had woken him up too. a moment later, i smelled smoke. the moment after that we were both out of bed, feet on floor, lights on. i went into the living room and the smoke smell got stronger, but there was no visible smoke. our smoke detectors weren’t going off. it was immediately evident that our apartment wasn’t on fire, but i thought maybe the other unit might be. i opened the front door in time to find a police officer on our doorstep about to start pounding on our door. “the building next to you is on fire,” he said, “you have to leave now.”

you imagine this moment, or at least i have, and it was reassuring later to realize that we were both reasonably good in the face of an actual emergency evacuation. i asked the officer if we could take enough time to get our cats, he said yes. less than 5 minutes later we were on the sidewalk, in the rain, but both cats were in their carriers, we had shoes on, sweats thrown over our pjs, our phones, wallets, car keys and both laptops in my messenger bag. cool heads, for the most part.*

once we were on the street it was clear that there was no great risk that our house was going to catch fire. the building was burning at the end furthest from our house, and it was the billowing-smoke-out-the-door kind, not open-flames-leaping-to-the-sky sort. the street was filled with emergency vehicles but we were fortunate that 1) we could still maneuver our car out of the driveway and 2) that my brother matt and his wife carrie live less than two miles from us and were willing to wake up, answer our phone call, and let us come over.

ben napped on the couch while i sipped tea in the pre-dawn darkness of matt and carrie’s living room for a few hours and around 7:30 we went home to find our house smokey with that acrid burning-building smell, but otherwise unharmed. we decided that we deserved to go out for breakfast before facing our workdays. waffles and bacon at 900 Grayson.

aside from a ruined night’s sleep, the only real harm done was to ben, in crating the cats. it will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that zeke is part housecat, part wild animal. he responds to fear, and to being cornered, like any wild animal will. he comes out swinging. caging zeke is a complex and delicate process at best, that involves setting up his cage several days in advance, long enough that he forgets about it, then picking him up, cuddling him while approaching the cage so that he can’t see it, and then you get one shot to tip him inside and slam the door shut. once he’s on to you, there’s no chance. you might as well cancel the vet appointment because you won’t get near him again all day. wednesday morning there was no time for that elaborate ruse. and so ben, being a hero, just went in and picked up zeke and held on. zeke growled and howled and snarled like a wild thing, and he sank his teeth into ben’s forearm deeply, in about a half dozen different places. there are scratches on his chest from zeke’s back claws, and on the backs of both hands from his front claws. it was like wrestling a raccoon. somehow ben just hung on until he had the cat stuffed into the bag and i zipped it shut. his arm was streaming with blood. we wrapped it with an ace bandage and went out the door. at matt’s we spent used up every small bandaid in their first aid kit, daubbing antibiotic ointment onto each bite mark after washing it. i wrapped the whole thing in gauze to cover the scratches and to keep the bandaids in place.

i insisted that ben go to the doctor because i know (first-hand, in fact) that cat bites are super prone to infection. by the time ben saw the doctor around 4pm, his arm was red and swollen, the muscles stiff. even now, 36 hours, one tetnus shot and 3 doses of antibiotics later, its still red and sore, though i can see it’s getting better. it’s worth noting that the doctor told ben that everything we did to treat the puncture wounds was wrong.**

so, the things we learned from our house nearly burning down:

1) we’re both pretty level-headed in an emergency
2) don’t put neosporin on puncture wounds
3) see a doctor immediately (not even 12 hours later) for cat bites
4) next time we have to cage zeke on short notice, ben’s motorcycle jacket and a pair of riding gloves will be employed
5) next time we have to evacuate because the building next door is burning down, check to see if our house is really in any danger. if it’s not, leave the cats where they are.

* there was the moment that a still-sleepy ben ran into the kitchen, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and offered it to the officer on the front door step. who just turned and looked at the burning building behind him and then politely said, “no thank you, we won’t be needing that.” and there was the moment when ben had a snarling zeke hanging from his left forearm and i apparently said, “what are you doing to him!?” i maintain that i *might* have been asking zeke what he was doing to ben.

** so apparently first aid creams like neosporin are just a mild antibiotic suspended in petroleum jelly. for a surface wound, like a scratch, you clean the wound and then put the neosporin on there to keep germs from getting in. but a puncture wound, because it is small and deep, the problem is that germs are already on the inside. putting a barrier on there actually keeps the germs in and prevents the body from doing what it is supposed to do and flush the germs out by bleeding. that, and the bacteria that come with cat bites, apparently, thrives in the anaerobic environment created under the seal of petroleum jelly. so, for cat bites: rinse and rinse and rinse with cold water, then leave the wound open while you go straight to the doctor’s office. you’re welcome.