亲身经历:我的猫从火堆中救了我

Early one morning last February, I felt the thud of my cat Tink's paws as she landed on my legs. I was fast asleep and she woke me up, which had never happened before. It was completely uncharacteristic: she sleeps downstairs and never comes into the bedroom.

去年2月的一天清晨,当她落在我腿上的时候，我感觉我的猫-丁当的爪子狠抓了一下。她把我从熟睡中叫醒了,之前从没发生过，这完全是不寻常的:她睡在楼下,从不进卧室。

I sat up feeling groggy because I'd been out the night before, but I soon realised something was very wrong. The room was half-filled with a layer of white smoke, eerie and alarming, hanging in the air about three feet deep like a bank of white cloud.

因为前天晚上外出，所以我昏昏沉沉地坐起来,但很快我意识到一些事情是异常的。房间里充满了一层白色的烟雾,怪异和令人惊慌, 像一堆白色的云悬挂在三英尺高的空中。

I woke up my partner, Russ, in a panic and we jumped out of bed. As we waded through the thick smoke, I was still trying to process exactly what was going on, and the danger only really hit me when I went out on to the landing.

我把我的爱人Russ叫醒，恐慌中我们跳下床。当我们费力的穿过厚厚烟雾时，我仍然试图确定到底发生了什么,当我出去站在地上时危险才真正到来。

Our son Jake, 19, had woken up, too, and as he opened his brother Scott's door, black smoke billowed out. The smoke from Scott's room curled up to the ceiling; it was only then that the smoke alarm was triggered. Scott, 22, emerged, shouting above the racket that he was struggling to breathe. I phoned the fire brigade, who told us to leave the house as quickly as we could.

我的儿子杰克19岁也已经醒了，当他打开他哥哥斯科特的门时,黑烟滚滚，烟一下子从斯科特的房间冲到天花板上，触发了那里的烟雾报警器。22岁的斯科特跳出来大喊大叫，他难以呼吸。我拨通了消防队的电话,他告诉我们尽可能的尽快离开房子。

It was a massive wrench, leaving all of our belongings behind, but we knew we had no choice. We assumed Tink had slipped out of the house, too.

留下我们所有的财产是巨大的痛苦,但是我们知道别无选择，我们想着丁当也已经溜出了房子。

Within minutes, six fire engines arrived. As I stood blearily in the road, I looked at our house and realised that the source of the fire was actually our next-door neighbour's - flames were licking the front of her house. She had also managed to get out and was later taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.

几分钟后,六辆消防车来了。当我困倦无神地站在路上看着我们的房子时,我意识到了火焰是从隔壁邻居的屋子前面蔓延过来的。她已经设法逃出来了，因为吸入浓烟太多已被送往医院。