A cat put one of its nine lives to the test Thursday after it jumped out of a fifth-floor window to escape a fire in Englewood.
The blaze broke out at an apartment building about 3 p.m. in the 6500 block of South Lowe Avenue, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said.
Smoke can be seen billowing from several windows on the fifth floor of the building in video of the fire posted to Twitter by fire officials.
While crews were working to extinguish the fire, onlookers on the sidewalk began pointing at one of the open widows as the cat approached a ledge, Langford said.
“It was looking out for quite a while,” Langford said. “After a couple of minutes the cat got closer to the edge and it looked like she was getting ready to go and she just did.”
The cat can be seen stretching out its paws as it leaps from the window and narrowly misses hitting a wall on its way down, according to the video. The cat appears to bounce a single time off of a patch of grass before strolling away.
“It went under my car and hid until she felt better after a couple of minutes and came out and tried to scale the wall to get back in,” Langford said.
The cat was not injured, Langford said, adding that he was still trying to track down its owner.
The blaze was extinguished by 3:25 p.m. and was contained to a single unit, officials said.
No one was injured in the fire.
