Cat saves Hanover woman from devastating fire

By JUNO OGLE
Daily Press Staff
Shannon Crumbley calls herself a survivor. Last year, she survived two vehicle crashes and had to relearn to walk. And this month, she said, she wouldn’t have survived the Dec. 2 fire that destroyed her home if it wasn’t for one thing — Sylvester.
As it turns out, she and the cat named Sylvester have survivorship in common. Crumbley said she learned that he died when he was born but was resuscitated by a veterinarian.
The black-and-white cat wasn’t even hers, but was just one of several cats that had started hanging around her 3-acre property near Hanover. Crumbley has owned the property since 2014 and had leased it to a couple, but when they fell behind on rent and decided to move on, she moved in herself at the beginning of September.
It didn’t take long for the cats to start showing up. A few yellow female cats also took to her. But Sylvester was the friendliest.
“Every time I’d come and unload stuff, he would just show up and he’d love on me and hang out,” Crumbley said Thursday at her property on Gold Rush Road. “When I moved in, he just showed up and never left.”
She made a door in one of the windows of her trailer, so the cats could come in from the cold.
“Actually, only the black-and-white one would ever come in,” Crumbley said.
She found out that Sylvester belonged to the daughter of her neighbor, Jimmy Lee. Sylvester did disappear for about a week after Crumbley moved into her property, and she asked Lee about him.
“He said, ‘She’s got him locked up in the house.’ As soon as he got out, he came over,” Crumbley said.
On the night of Dec. 1, Crumbley went to sleep in the bedroom on the south end of her trailer. About 3:30 a.m., she was woken up by Sylvester meowing loudly.
“I looked, and here he comes down the hall, and he’s coming out of the fire,” she said. “He was coming toward me: ‘Mom, get up!’”
With the fire blocking her exit, Crumbley went to a bedroom window to make her escape.
“I was hanging out the window, trying to get the cat out, and I finally just dropped,” she said. “I let go and fell to the ground.”
Crumbley broke two ribs and injured her hand in the escape. Sylvester got out on his own.
She ran to the home of her other neighbor, Billy Lee, a volunteer firefighter and Jimmy’s brother.
“We come running over here, and he goes, ‘You have a job: Keep your water hose on [your] truck,’” Crumbley said.
He then alerted fire crews.
Crumbley’s pickup was parked close enough to the trailer that paint on the driver’s side was blistered, and its taillight, door handles and rearview mirror melted.
She said she feels pretty lucky the fire wasn’t worse, as she had just filled the truck’s gas tank, and there were several propane canisters sitting at the north end of the trailer. Crumbley suspects the fire started from soot buildup in the chimney of a small stove that was on her porch.
The trailer was completely burned in the fire, so she spent a couple of nights at a hotel. When she got back, Sylvester was waiting.
“I hadn’t been home in a couple days and he just comes running over to me,” she said.
Crumbley still hasn’t been able to get into her trailer to see what might be salvageable, because the aluminum roof partially collapsed and it’s not safe to go in. She said she had cash and all her power tools in the trailer.
Once she can get the roof removed, she plans to save what she can, and her neighbors will demolish it for her, Crumbley said.
She’s not homeless, though, as she’s now working on making a home out of a small cabin that was already on the property when she bought it. The previous owner built it, but passed away before it was finished. She’d been using it for storage.
And even though her truck ran after the fire, on Thursday it stopped, Crumbley said. She suspects soot got into the engine and the fuel injectors are misfiring. Her well doesn’t have power, a problem she planned to start looking at Thursday. In the meantime, she’s able to get water and food deliveries from Walmart. Neighbor Billy Lee is letting her use a shower and bathroom facilities at his RV park next door.
Crumbley said she was told she could get a good scrap price for the metal roof, and she plans to sell part of her property to the Lee brothers so they can connect theirs, but to get by in the meantime, she’s started a GoFundMe account. It can be found at gofundme.com/f/a-home-lost-saved-by-a-brave-cat. As of Friday afternoon, it had only $75 in donations.
It’s not the first time Crumbley has survived adversity, however. Her husband, Clee, died in July. Last year, she was in two crashes that totaled her pickups. In the first crash, in March 2023, a commercial truck changed lanes and hit her head-on. She wasn’t seriously injured that time, but wasn’t so lucky in October.
She said she was messing with the radio in her car when she ran off the road, jumped a ravine, crashed on the other side and was thrown from the vehicle. As a result, Crumbley now has metal rods in her femur, hip and pelvis. It wasn’t until five months ago that she was able to walk again.
Even though the injuries qualified her for disability assistance, it was difficult for her to deal with.
“I would be in Walmart on the little carts at nighttime, crying, just because I thought I’d have to do that every time,” Crumbley said. “I’d wait until it was night and real quiet and not busy.”
She recently finished physical therapy, though, with just a few lingering effects from the second crash. She said once she gets back on her feet from the fire, she will likely go back to work as a pilot-car driver.
“I don’t feel totally disabled,” Crumbley said. “I can still run the chainsaw. I’ve been out there, cutting away, but that’s one of my favorite things to do. That’s my therapy.”
She’s not too worried about the latest setback, though.
“God will provide, because I’m alive, for some reason — you know what I mean?” Crumbley said. “It’s a sign, I guess, that I’ve got something else I need to do, just not sure what. I hope it comes to me, because I’d like to fulfill what it is.”
Until she finds that purpose, she’s got Sylvester. When she posted her GoFundMe fundraiser, she wrote that he wasn’t hers — but his owner then sent her a message.
“She said, ‘I can’t keep Sylvester here at home. He keeps going to your house, so you can consider him your cat,’” Crumbley said.
Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdailypress.com.