When I say this story is true, I'm saying it's true. Not only factually true, but universally true. Sometimes you have to make decisions immediately. Sometimes you make good ones, and sometimes you burn the living room carpet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saturday afternoon found me at home alone. In hindsight, had that not been the case, none of the following would have happened. So there I am, just doing a few errands around the house; when I discover that one of the Zippo's isn't lighting that well. I get out the Zippo fluid and take the lighter apart. As I'm dripping the lighter fluid into the base of the wick, I hear the stupid goddamn sonofabitch cat start to make that noise she makes before she vomits. I don't know why, but she emits this warbling noise about 30 seconds before blast off. It's nice to have a warning, but I'd much rather have a cat that's not fucking bulimic.

Now, the cat had thrown up on the berber carpeting the day before, which was pretty irritating. Not impossible to clean up, but it's just fucking gross. She won't do that shit on the tile or the wood or the fucking toilet like a civilized creature; only on the carpet.

As soon as I hear the warble, I hop up from the couch, pivot to the side, snatch her up and lunge for the sliding glass door. As I'm doing so, my lanky, nobby-kneed, cracker ass bumps into the coffee table. I throw open the sliding glass door, toss out the purging kitty; and turn around just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from my living room floor. WHOOSHing sound effects and all.

Apparently, bumping into the coffee table caused a lit candle to tip over onto the bottle of lighter fluid, a dangerous domino effect that resulted in said flame ball.

I grab my glass of water off the table and drench the burning carpet. And for some reason I was jumping up and down too, not sure how that helped.

The carpet has an obvious mark on it now about the size of a hand or foot. Not quite burned through, but definitely singed to a satisfying brown crisp. So much for keeping the hellspawn animal from barfing on the carpet, eh? Really saved myself the effort of having to clean up a little puke.