Firefighters determined that there were no people inside the garage at the time of the fire, but their attention was drawn to a cat darting inside the garage several times.
Firefighters tried to catch the animal, but it resisted. One firefighter saw the cat dragging a kitten in its teeth. She carried the baby away from the fire and again threw herself into the fire.
The mother cat burned her eyes, ears, muzzle, but pulled all the kittens out of the burning building. She could only pull them out one at a time, so she was forced to return to the burning and smoky garage 5 times.
The animal burned its paws, damaged its ears, singed its muzzle, its eyes bubbled from the flame, but only when the cat carried the last kitten out of the flame and made sure that everyone had been saved, she fell unconscious.
One of the firefighters brought the cat to the veterinary clinic and she was rescued.
This was the appearance of the cat (that was named Scarlett) immediately after the incident, and this is how she looked later when her hair grew back and the wounds healed.
The kittens were adopted in a short time. Their mother was taken in by a woman named Karen Wellen. She made a promise to the members of the Animal Welfare League, who took Scarlett under her care, to take care of the cat as if she were her own child. This promise has been kept.