The evening of July 10 started as a regular night for Alachua County residents Ann and Rick Lyons. Rick was sound asleep, and Ann was trying to wind down with their four cats around 2 a.m. Little did they know that their night was about to take a dramatic turn.
Ann, having given up on sleeping, entered the living room where their tabby cat Annie was resting on her blanket. Just minutes after Ann sat down, Annie suddenly woke up, jumped off the couch, and started crying out in distress. “She was still sleeping right where I had been [in the living room.] I had not been there five minutes and all of a sudden she woke up, jumped off the couch, ran across the room and started crying this horrible cry,” Lyons recalled.
Initially thinking someone might be breaking in, Ann approached the cat door and saw flames through the opening. She ran through the house, screaming for her husband, alerting him that the house was on fire.
Rick, abruptly awakened, sprang into action. “I slung my CPAP off my face and ran to the laundry room in my black underwear to see my car on fire. The flame was from the floor all the way to the ceiling,” Rick said. He quickly opened the garage door, grabbed a long garden hose from behind the house, and made multiple trips back and forth to put out the fire, preventing further damage to their home.
During his efforts, Rick sustained burns to the bottom of his feet, hand, and arm from metal shrapnel, but he is recovering well. Multiple fire rescue teams soon arrived, managing the excessive smoke and investigating the cause of the fire.
The fire inspector and fire departments determined the fire was caused by a faulty refrigerator that the Lyons had bought less than a month ago. The Lyons are currently staying in a family member’s RV behind the garage while their house undergoes cleaning to remove the smoke damage and odor. “We should be able to go in the house around noon tomorrow,” Rick said.
Ann Lyons considers Annie her “hero cat,” as it was a miracle that the cat made a noise loud enough for Ann to hear. Ann, who has hearing aids but wasn’t wearing them at the time, reflected on how unusual it was for their normally skittish cats to react in such a way. “All the cats normally run and hide from noises. They’re scared of everything. Even him [Rick Lyons],” she said.
Despite the trauma of the event, the Lyons are grateful that no further damage was done to their home. They acknowledge that the situation could have been much worse and are relieved that their quick actions, prompted by Annie’s alert, saved their house from greater destruction.
