Cats may have nine lives — but your house only has one.
Pet owners around the globe are being warned that their frisky felines make also quite effective firestarters, as a new safety review revealed that cats have been responsible for more than 100 house fires in South Korea over the past three years.
Equally alarming: Pets are actually responsible for about 1,000 house fires in the United States every year, according to the American Humane Association.
The Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Department reported on Thursday that they’d counted a total of 107 incidents of residential cat arson occurring between January 2019 and November 2021, according to a CNN report.
Experts believe cats most likely prompted the fires to spread by switching on electric burners as they wantonly traipsed over touch-sensitive buttons on the surface of a hotplate. Left on too long, the appliances can overheat and catch fire, according to the department.
Slightly more than half of the fires in South Korea started while homeowners were out, but four people have been injured in cases of cat arson, per the report.
“Cat-related fires are continuing to occur recently,” said department official Chung Gyo-chul in a statement. “We advise households with pets to pay extra attention as fire could spread widely when no one is at home.”
Meanwhile, although some of the 1,000 American blazes were caused by pets chewing through wires or curiously swatting candles, the AHA warned kitchen kitty owners to “put covers on or remove stove knobs and discourage climbing in the kitchen.”
The advisory continued, “an accidental nudge of a stove knob is the number one cause of house fires started by pets. By preventing your pet from interacting with a stove, you can take a big step toward preventing fires.”
Pet owners were also advised to move all flammable objects from around the stove, such as paper towels and hand cloths. They also recommended safety measures such as child-proofing knobs, and heating appliances with automatic shut-off and locking functions to prevent being turned on by the curious kitty’s wayward paw — which we can only hope was an accident, given the disturbing number of cats charting on the psychopathy scale.
The rate of pet induced fires are progressively increasing in Seoul, alongside the increasing popularity of pet owning in South Korea, which is up to about 25% of the population. The department noted that 31 such fires occurred during the first nine months of 2019 — almost four times as many during the same period in 2016 with just 8 incidents.
Meanwhile, a reported 70% of American households keeps a pet — about 90.5 million families for whom pet-induced fires are also a risk. According to the National Fire Protection Association, at least 750 home fires per year are ignited by household pets or wild animals.
But it’s pets themselves who often suffer the consequences. The Red Cross sees about 500,000 pets suffer from smoke inhalation each year, while 40,000 will die due to home fires, says the American Veterinary Medical Association.