Cats=Worthless

2am the smoke alarm in the downstairs apartment goes off. My wife and i scramble to figure out what is going on. My neighbor (whose apartment it is) is at work at the Mobil station.

I run downstairs to look in his windows to see if I can spot any smoke or fire. I see nothing. I run back upstairs and tell my wife that it looks normal in his apartment. My wife says she smells smoke so I run down to the basement (located right behind his apartment) and I smell a little smoke and the alarm is still going.

I look up Mobil's phone number and my wife calls. She tells him the alarm is going off and that she smells smoke. He tells her he never cooks and he can't leave his job. As she is on the phone with him the alarm stops and we don't smell smoke anymore. We stay up for awhile to make sure everything is ok.

Tonight "Dude" (as we call him to ourselves) knocks on my door. Speaking in a heavy Southern twang (he is from Texas) he says "Good thang ya'll called me last night. Turns out one of my cats turned on the stove. I had a plastic bucket sitting on the stove and it caught on fire. One of my other cats must've knocked it off the stove and on to the counter where it burned out. I got home about 5 hours later and the stove was still on high."

Now I have always hated cats. I think they are loveless worthless creatures (with the exception of some.) I can honestly say I hate them more now that my life was put in danger by one.

Another funny thing about this story is this guy always complains that my 15 pound little dog makes too much noise walking around our carpeted living room during the day. Aside from that who in their right mind would bother to go knock on their neighbor's door and own up to that? Why would you tell me that your cats set shit on fire? I didn't die and the house didn't burn down, I don't need to know your stupidity any further.