We have been blessed for the last several years with a small, sweet female cat that we called Miss. Puss Puss. She was the sweetest little cat I've ever known. She often sat on my monitor for hours, hoping to get a little bit of a neck rub now and then.

Tonight, I was baking cookies with my son in the kitchen. The dryer went off and I went to get the clothes out. A few of them still felt a bit damp as I pulled them out. About that time, my timer on the oven went off, and I went to the next room to get the cookies out. I returned, put the clothes that were laying out on the dryer door back in the dryer, and shut the door and started it.

My son said that something was bumping in the dryer, and I told him that daddy probably had put some shoes in it.

About 20 minutes later I returned to fold clothes and found my kitties little body in the dryer. It was truly horrifying.

My child and I just cried all night. He finally went to sleep, and I do what I always do - checked the Internet.

I see from reading that this is not that uncommon. It doesn't make me feel any less horrible though.

Watch your cats with dryers, guys. Our cat often slept on top of the dryer, but never IN it. All it takes is once.

It was probably a horrible death and our little kitty is gone.

If I had it to do over, I would put a sign on my dryer reminding all of us to check it before turning it on, to shoo the cat and maybe even swat her tail if she was ever caught near it, and to keep that darn door shut.