Animal Intelligence and Heroism
While this occurred more than a decade ago, some scientists are still trying to decide if animals are intelligent or if they act purely on instinct. A cat's instinct to avoid fire and save herself would be far stronger than her instinct to save her kittens, but Scarlett proved that animals act on emotion as well as instinct. If they know fear, pain, loss, grief, a sense of family, love and so many other emotions that we experience, then how can we treat them as if they do not?
Scarlett the cat
Scarlett the cat is a former stray cat whose efforts to save her kittens
from a fire, at serious harm to herself, attracted worldwide media attention
and has been related in a number of nonfiction books. She has also become
one of the animals featured by the shelter which treated her and her
kittens, the North Shore Animal League, in their fund-raising and public
relations efforts.
On March 30, 1996, Scarlett was in an abandoned garage allegedly used as a crack house in Brooklyn, New York, with her five kittens when a fire started for undetermined reasons. The fire department responded to a call about the fire and quickly extinguished it. When the fire was under control, one of the firefighters on the scene, David Giannelli, noticed Scarlett carrying her kittens away from the garage one by one. Scarlett herself had been severely burned in the process of pulling her kittens from the fire. Her eyes were blistered shut, her ears radically burned, her paws burned and her coat seriously singed. The hair on her face was almost completely burned away. After saving the kittens, she was seen to touch each of her kittens with her nose to ensure they were all there and alive, as the blisters on her eyes kept her from being able to see them, and then collapsed unconscious.
Gianelli took the intact family to the veterinary clinic of the North Shore
Animal League, in Port Washington, New York, where Scarlett and her kittens
were treated. The weakest of the kittens, a white one, died of a virus a
month after the fire. However, after three months of treatment and recovery,
during which time one of the staff of the League stated Scarlett was "spoiled
rotten" and treated like a queen, Scarlett and her surviving kittens
were well enough to be adopted.
The story of this feline mother's heroic efforts to save her kittens attracted worldwide media attention, and the League received 7,000 letters offering to adopt Scarlett and her kittens. They ultimately chose to divide the kittens into two pairs, and the two pairs of kittens were given for adoption to residents of Long Island. Scarlett herself was adopted out to Karen Wellen. In her letter, Ms. Wellen indicated that, as a result of losing her cat shortly after being injured in a traffic accident herself, she had become more compassionate and would take in only animals with special needs.
The North Shore Animal League has created an award named the Scarlett Award
for Animal Heroism in her honor. This award is presented to animals that
have engaged in heroic acts to benefit others, whether humans or animals.
Watch a short movie clip of Scarlett after her brave ordeal here.
Further reading
Driscoll, Laura (1997). The Bravest Cat!: The True Story of Scarlett,
illus. DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan, New York: Grosset & Dunlap. ISBN 0-448-41720-0.
Martin, Jane, and J. C. Suarès (1997). Scarlett Saves Her Family:
The Heart-warming True Story of a Homeless Mother Cat Who Rescued Her Kittens
From a Raging Fire. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84288-2.
Weinstein, Emily Eve (2002). Cat Book. Huntington, W.V.: Beau Soleil.
ISBN 0-9666085-8-5.
New parents and what is left of the building from which Scarlett saved her family:
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