Fire-starting China pet dubbed ‘badass cat’ after it turns on cooker sparking blaze causing US$14,000 damage to home
A cat in China has used up one of its nine lives after accidentally turning on the cooker in his owner’s kitchen and setting the home on fire.
The cat, called Jingoudiao, caused 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) worth of damage to the flat.
The fire-starting feline escaped unharmed and his owner, Dandan, changed her Douyin account name to “Sichuan’s most badass cat”, and made the fluffy pet appear on live-streaming sessions to “compensate”.
The owner’s lighthearted reaction to the accident, and the cat’s cute looks, have attracted 8 million views on Douyin.
On April 4, Dandan, who was playing mahjong outside, got a phone call from the property management staff in her compound, saying her home was on fire.
Rushing back to her empty flat in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, she found out her cat was responsible for the blaze, which burnt the entire first floor of her loft.
It transpired Jingoudiao was playing in the kitchen, and accidentally touched the induction cooker’s touch panel, turning it on.
Firefighters found the golden British Shorthair cat hiding in a cabinet upstairs, covered in ash but not injured.
In the following days, Dandan joked that she was making him “work to pay off his debt”, by appearing in live-streaming sessions, and even put a label on him saying “arsonist”.
Dandan also video chatted with a firefighter in far-off Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in northwestern China, and asked him to teach Jingoudiao fire safety tips.
The firefighter said it was the first time he had been asked to teach a cat and joked that he had tried to interest the fire station dog in safety issues, to no avail.
On April 13, Dandan posted a letter of apology online, signed with her fingerprint and that of Jingoudiao’s paw.
She felt she was to blame for not shutting off the power to the cooker, and vowed to pay attention to fire safety in future, urging others to do the same.
On mainland social media the reaction was largely humorous.
“All I wanted to do is to cook my mum dinner,” said one person pretending to be Jingoudiao.
“Thank you. I just switched off my electric cooker. I have a naughty cat who goes everywhere in my flat,” another person said.
“My cat just keeps flushing the toilet, leaving me to pay big water bills,” a third person quipped.
