Kitkat had gone for her morning constitutional. Its not Canada cold but its getting into kiwi winter, about 14C, you want a jacket but you won't freeze. So she arrived home, a little damp from the morning mist, just as we finished breakfast. Now we had turned the fireplace on to warm up the house and I said to Blaise "its surprising that she doesn't curl up near the fire."
Its true she never has gone near it the last few times we put it on, she's more of a couch cat, so i wasn't expecting her to explore it today. But lo and behold about 10 minutes after i said that a large ball of fur was sniffing the air. She approached from the side, did the whole sniff the air, turn on the spot, lick the fur like she didn't care and then came closer. She obviously recognized this was quite warm but rather than slowly exploring the environment she decided this was excellent and walked straight up the the fireplace and began to nose around the protective plastic cover at the bottom near the floor. It was probably ok where her face was but her ears were high enough to be straight into the heat coming off the fireplace...3...2...1.
Ears suddenly whipped back, hackles went up, cat turned and bolted away from the fireplace. Kitkat discovery of the day, fire is hot. I got a giggle from this one, as did Blaise who had been watching the show. For those of you who think we're cruel, we checked her ears and she's fine, not even a little pink or tender, she also get a 30 minute grooming session afterwards which she really quite enjoyed.
Follow up: cat has discovered optimum point of warm vs not setting ear afire.
