Well, Uhhuh35, what I don't understand is this: during a fire, isn't the electrical power usually one of the first things to go? So how can a smoke-alarm go off, if the power's out?
And Flame, there's such a thing as smoke-alarms that emit light, but what good are those if one is sound asleep in bed, or out of view of the smoke-alarm?
franksolich takes his chances, and God has always been good.
If the alarm is in your bedroom, the light will wake you. Though there isn't a great danger, with that many cats, the cats will probably wake you before the alarm would even go off.
However, the danger is very real. My family has had 3 fires on the homestead...one when my grandmother was small, total loss of the house. One about 15 years ago, wiring in the bathroom got hot enough to burn several square feet of wall before it was discovered (by luck, if my brother had been asleep, it would have been different). And the third about 5 years ago, caused by a lightning strike, they lost one kennel building and several dogs. If there had been hard-wired alarms in the houses and kennels by the third time, they might have saved the kennel and the dogs. As it was, one theory for my mom's lung cancer was that it was actually started by the toxic smoke from the kennel, when she ran right in and tried to get to her dogs. My brother was about a minute behind her, got her out before she was badly burned, both had to be treated for smoke inhalation. He was sick for 2 or 3 days, Mom was sick much longer.
With earlier warning, many things could be so different.
I know you have no family, but do your cats have a way out of the house if they can't wake you?
