Scarlett

She was a stray living with her five kittens, about four weeks old, in an abandoned garage in Brooklyn that caught fire on 30 March 1996. Firefighter David Giannelli was outside when he saw her carrying a kitten across the pavement, and then going back. She went in five times. By the last trip her ears were burned off, her face and paws were blistered, her whiskers and most of her coat were gone and her eyes had swollen shut. She could not see the kittens she had carried out, so she touched each of the five in turn with her nose to count them, and then collapsed unconscious. Giannelli got them all to the North Shore Animal League on Long Island. She was treated for three months. Her eyes recovered; the burns left her with scars for life. Four of the five kittens survived. When the story got out, the shelter received more than seven thousand adoption offers from around the world, and she went to Karen Wellen, who had written that she wanted a cat with special needs. She lived indoors and quietly for another twelve years and died in 2008. The shelter's Scarlett Award for Animal Heroism is named after her.

Loved by · Karen Wellen, David Giannelli

Honours

• 1996Carried five kittens one at a time out of a burning garage, and counted them by touch
• 1996More than seven thousand people wrote asking to adopt her
• 1998The Scarlett Award for Animal Heroism established in her name

Their kind

Not a breed but a coat: the orange-and-black patchwork needs two X chromosomes, so a calico is almost always female.

A life in seasons