Paramedic Linda Akerman responded to a call Nov. 30 for a house fire in East Haddam. Ms. Akerman is currently a deputy fire marshal for the town of Colchester and has been a paramedic for 35 years. After all humans were accounted, the life saving CPR was started on a just four-week old kitten.
After arriving at the scene, and after all of the people living in the burning home were evacuated and doing well, there were reports that there were still animals in the building.
There was an adult dog and cat that were brought out of the building that unfortunately did not make it after unsuccessful CPR.
As the paramedics continued working on the adult animals, they were alerted that there was a box of kittens still inside of the building.
The box was then swiftly brought out of the building where the situation was accessed.
“We then turned our attention onto this little box of kittens, there were five of them in there. All of them were not moving,” Ms. Akerman said.
The kittens were “covered in smoke and soot.”
Each of the paramedics there grabbed a kitten and began CPR.
“I just picked one up, reached in, and I just started doing mouth to mouth CPR on the kitten,” Ms. Akerman said. However, the kitten remained lethargic and unmoving for minutes.
“All of a sudden I heard this little ‘meow’,” Ms. Akerman said.
It was very cold this November morning, so she tucked the kitten into her jacket and continued to work on him, and as she kept going, his little meows got stronger and stronger.
“When I heard the meow, I almost couldn’t believe it. It was just miraculous, and it felt amazing,” Ms. Akerman said.
Meanwhile, while the other kittens were taken to the vet, Ms. Akerman saw that her kitten was breathing on his own and looked stable, so she took the kitten to her home for more observation. Ms. Akerman had worked for 15 years as a vet technician, so she was equipped to take care of the kitten. The kitten carried the pungent smell of fire and thus named him Smokey after deliberating with her family.
Later that day, the mother of the kittens was found (it had escaped the fire and hid until the area was safe) and because of the age of Smokey, he was returned to the mother.
Another kitten from the litter was able to be resuscitated and was also brought to stay with the mother. The kittens and their mom stayed at another local firefighter’s house, but
Smokey is arranged to be adopted and join Ms. Akerman’s family.
