Scarlett is not just a cat. This is a mom with a capital letter. Her courage, maternal love, and devotion, I think, will make everyone think.
… On March 30, 1996, a fire broke out in an abandoned Brooklyn garage in New York. Firefighters arrived at the scene quickly enough, but during the extinguishing, one of the firefighters – David Gianelli – noticed a stray cat, which repeatedly returned to the garage engulfed in flames, pulling out their newborn kittens one by one.
The world learned about Scarlett in the spring of 1996. The cat lived quietly with five monthly kittens in one of the old garages in Brooklyn. But on the night of March 30, someone set fire to the garage. Arriving firefighters found that there were no people in the garage at the time of the fire, but drew attention to the cat, which rushed into the burning garage over and over again. Firefighters wanted to catch a cat, but the animal did not come into their hands. Suddenly, one of the firefighters noticed that the kitty was carrying a kitten in its teeth. Carrying the baby to a safe place, the cat again rushed into the fire. Despite burns to her eyes, severely burned ears, and muzzle, she carried all her kittens out of the burning room – and, since the cat could only bear them one at a time, she had to return to the flaming, smoke-soaked garage five times. The cat’s paws were already burned, its ears were damaged, its muzzle was singed and its eyes were bubbling from the fire, but only after it pulled out the last, fifth kitten from the fire, poked its muzzle into each one to make sure that everyone was saved lost consciousness. Thanks to one of the firefighters, he personally delivered the cat to the veterinary clinic, where she was rescued.
This is how Scarlett looked in the first days after the fire
and so – later, when the hair grew and the wounds healed
The New York Post wrote about the heroine cat, after which the editorial office received thousands of offers from compassionate people with offers to help Scarlett. The kittens were quickly dismantled (alas, one of them, a white one, died shortly after the fire, but the rest settled down perfectly in new families), and Scarlett herself was taken in by a woman named Karen Wellen. Karen promised the representatives of the Animal Welfare League, which took Scarlett under guardianship, that she would take care of the animal as if she were her own child, and she kept her word.
After the fire, Scarlett lived for another 13 years in the house of Karen Wellen, surrounded by care and guardianship. True, Scarlett could no longer have kittens, but thanks to her heroic deed, kitty became the standard of maternal care and devotion throughout the world. Since 1996, the Animal Welfare League has established a special Scarlett Award for Animal Heroism, which is awarded to animals that participated in the rescue of people or other animals (mainly dogs that take part in searching for people under the rubble after earthquakes). And Scarlett herself was recognized as the Cat of the Century.
