Well. Now I know what it’s like to take a cat on a fire drill.

(Verdict: We’ve had more enjoyable experiences together.)

I will say, it takes a pretty severe confluence of events to get us both out of the apartment, and well, it happened. Fire alarm goes off this morning, so I pull on some pants and a coat and head down to the nearest entrance. I inspect the alarm panel, and sure enough the zone that’s registered as having the alarm is ours. I ponder this for a bit, think about how guilty I’d feel if anything happened, and decide to take action. Walk back to the apartment (to this point I have not smelled any smoke, but still), haul out the carrier, haul the kitten out from under the bed, stuff her into the carrier, and decide that heading to the car is the best plan. So we drove across the street and sat in the parking lot and watched two fire trucks and at least two cop cars come and do their thing.

To the credit of Ms Weasalpants, she never squawked, and didn’t resist at all when I pulled her out from under the bed, which would be my biggest fear in a situation like this - not being able to get her out from a hiding spot. I wouldn’t say she had a great time, but some snacks when we got home helped defuse the terror, and some special gluttony at feeding time tonight will be in order for being so good overall.

I haven’t yet heard if there was any fire to speak of, or perhaps it was just a lot of smoke. Either way, it was an exciting morning.