How Trident the cat saved his family, proving some heroes wear orange

Orange cats have become a meme over the last few years, known for the “orange cat behavior” that often calls into question their number of brain cells. In fact, there’s an entire subreddit with 805K members called r/OneOrangeBraincell dedicated to their delightful derpiness. However, sometimes out of that derpiness comes something more. The amazing Trident the cat recently proved that while not all heroes wear capes, some heroes do wear orange.

Alana Falk, Trident’s mom, shuts the door to her bedroom at night. Sometimes Trident, whose fur appears as a dapper orange and white tuxedo with little white socks, will want to come in for “one more pet,” Newsweekreports. What would typically start as a request for “one more pet” quickly escalated one night, however. Trident was “meowing, scratching at the door, and trying to get in,” Falk wrote on TikTok in a video that now has over 276K views. Trident refused to let his owners sleep. Seeing this was unusual, Falk got up to open the door. Trident practically fell inside the room with all the vigor of his scratching and meowing, and ran to the stairs, still meowing, Falk shared. She realized shortly after that something in the house wasn’t right. There was a burning chemical smell in the house that hadn’t been there when Falk and her husband went to bed.

When her husband went downstairs to see what the smell was, “he found a piece had come off the inside of the dishwasher and was lying on the [dishwasher’s] heating element,” Falk wrote. The smell in the house had been from this piece melting on top of that heater.

Falk’s husband remained unconvinced of the cat’s bravery, but she very clearly disagreed. "...Many people, including my husband, say he didn't 'save' us and that at the most he saved the dishwasher from being destroyed," she told Newsweek. "I still say he saved us and the other cats and our dog because the fumes were so strong as soon as I opened the bedroom door." While dishwashers are often primed to handle melting, there’s still no way of knowing what could have happened if Trident had not pointed out the smell when he did.

Falk was so impressed with Trident’s bravery that she crafted a custom photo of her furry friend. As flames blaze in the background, Trident stands bravely in front of them, the words “not all heroes wear capes” underneath them. She now keeps it on the mantel, where her husband will always see it.

Such a feat might actually not be unusual for a cat, even an orange one. “While the human nose contains roughly five to six million olfactory receptors, cats have up to 200 million,” veterinarian Dr. Teri Linn Byrd toldRover. Their noses are some 40 times more effective than a little old human’s could ever be. Plus, as Rover shares, they use these powerful receptors not just to seek out treats, but to sniff out danger. Indeed, cats have been known to save their families from fire and even intruders.

Trident saved the day in the best way he knew how: by simply being a cat.

If you’re a lover of derpy orange cats, however, don’t worry…his heroism doesn't erase or outweigh his specialness. Trident still is known to get up to a shenanigan or two (see below).