Strange Coal Stove Stories

I don't know if this qualifies as strange but yesterday while I was sitting in my living room both cats were sound asleep in front of the stove. A mourning dove must of got spooked outside and flew right into the window. This in turn spooked the living "you know what" out of my cats. One took off for the dining room and the other one?? You guessed it... Jumped 4 feet into the air, Right onto the 600* stove!! I was sitting right there on my computer and saw everything! I never heard such a shriek out of my poor kitty cat. He ran and hid for 3 hours. His back paws were cherry red and I was really worried He might need the vet, but today seems much better. He was even purring and showing some affection this morning. What an eventful evening last night... sheeeeeeeesh.. Anyone else with any crazy issues like this?

Seems like someone on the forum got burned trying to keep their dog from touching the stove...? Can't remember the details.

if I remember correctly smitty had an event simular to that, hopefully he 's on tonite cuz I could go for another good laff, my eyes are still watering from your story thanx jim

Before I put the gate up around the stove to protect my daughter from touching it my cats used to jump on on the fireplace mantle so they could jump up to the ledge separating my living room from my kitchen. They would jump on the bookshelf, then the mantle then the ledge where they'd sit for hours. Well, one night our one cat who is slightly stupid decided for whatever reason that she was going to be lazy and bypass the mantle. Where she decided to jump was the top of the 650* DS-1600 coal stove where she promptly screamed and jump head first into the book shelf when she realized that the stove was hot. I couldn't stop laughing, I tried to find her for several hours but she hid herself pretty good after that. My wife and I didn't see her until the next morning. Now, neither of the cats go near the stove. They can easily jump the gate to sit near it or jump on top of the mantle but I believe they are both scared now.

jim d wrote:if I remember correctly smitty had an event simular to that, hopefully he 's on tonite cuz I could go for another good laff, my eyes are still watering from your story thanx jim

I think Smitty's event was his one and only experiment with bituminous coal.

I got a good laugh a few months ago when someone posted about a puffback in the basement stove, apparently it was enough to blow the cover off an unused thimble in the kitchen and blow soot & ash all over the place. I bet the Mrs. was impressed with that one!

Yeah I had a small explosion that spooked the kitty. Wasn't the bitty blowout that cracked my glass though - different day.

We had a similar jumping cat experience. It got used to jumping from the stove to the cellar window ledge in the summer time when everything was nice and cool. Then it tried the same maneuver after I had fired up the stove one fall. Funny how the response was the same as others...one very loud yowl and the cat disappeared until the next day.

We had one other bad experience with a cat and fire, although it wasn't the coal stove that time. The cat was used to curling up on the bench next to the TV because of the warmth from the TV. Well there was also a candle on that bench that was probably there for about 3 years and never lit. The decorating committee in the house decided to light the candle one evening. Later on the cat decided to curl up as usual next to the TV. I'm not sure how long it took, but we started smelling something burning, then we saw a streak of fur running into the kitchen to hide under the antique pie safe. The burning smell was now in the kitchen, but not for long because the streak of fur and smoke headed for the back bedroom to hide in the closet. We tracked down the cat with the smoking tail before it could run anywhere else and set the house on fire. I got scratched a few places holding the cat over the bathroom sink with its tail under water.

The best story I have involved a wood stove not a coal stove, but what the heck, it is too good not to tell. I will try to keep it "G" rated.

When a friend of mine was young and singel he had built a very small A frame house. He brought a young lady friend to the house and made a cozy and romatic fire in the wood stove.

Things were going his way. She was now in the upper bunk and he had shed all of his atire. At this point he was ready with anticipation (get it?). He reached up to the bunk and part of his anatomy came in contact with the very hot wood stove. When asked if that put an end to his romatic plans he said no, but it was a bit painful.

grizzly2 wrote:The best story I have involved a wood stove not a coal stove, but what the heck, it is too good not to tell. I will try to keep it "G" rated.

When a friend of mine was young and singel he had built a very small A frame house. He brought a young lady friend to the house and made a cozy and romatic fire in the wood stove.

Things were going his way. She was now in the upper bunk and he had shed all of his atire. At this point he was ready with anticipation (get it?). He reached up to the bunk and part of his anatomy came in contact with the very hot wood stove. When asked if that put an end to his romatic plans he said no, but it was a bit painful.

hey the show must go on

Well this isn't along the lines of cat stories, but way before I lived here when it was just my shop, I had the Monticello set up and had a flimsy galvanized 6" stack setup. I was only burning wood in the stove and it wasn't firebrick lined. Well, I had almost 100 gallons of used motor oil in two blue barells, from years of oil changes. I got ahold of a Mother Earth News article on how to make a waste oil burner. It claimed the design was smokeless and efficient. I rigged up the most preposterous fuel tank, a one gallon paint thinner can, with a soldered fitting on the bottom, 1/4" copper tubing, an inline ball valve to regulate the flow. The 1/4" line ran through a hole in the stack to pre-heat the oil! It then dripped down through a plate with holes in it into a cast iron frying pan inside the stove! HAHAHAHA I had it making heat a few times, but the whole setup was so wrong, it coated the inside of the stove with black oily residue. And one windy winter day it was billowing thick black acrid smoke across the property here. That was way before I started looking at coal. I ended up giving my waste oil away, that was during the last gas crisis. A guy with a waste oil burner took it.