Cat Alerts Owners to Rekindled Fire in Viral TikTok (Exclusive)

A watchful cat turned into an unlikely hero when a cozy winter fire at home nearly reignited into disaster.

The viral TikTok that followed has been seen by millions, all thanks to Marble, a gray-brown feline whose instincts — and perfectly timed appearance on camera — caught his family’s attention before flames could spread.

“We poured like a bunch of water into the fireplace, completely extinguished it out,” Sabeen S. tells PEOPLE. “There were no embers in which we felt like, Hey, it’s like safe enough to leave.”

That December night, Sabeen and her husband had friends over to admire the fireplace they had never once used in three years of living there. Marble loved curling close to the warmth while their other cat, Cheeto, dashed away, too skittish to stay near the flames.

When the evening wrapped, the group decided to head out for dessert, but not before Sabeen angled a home camera toward the hearth. “We usually do turn the cameras on when we leave the house just ’cause I do have two cats and I wanna keep them safe,” she explains.

Within minutes of pulling out of the neighborhood, motion alerts pinged her phone. “The thumbnail was Marble face in front of, with a blazing fire in the back,” she recalls.

The sight left her stunned, and panic set in quickly. “I see Marble just walking around and the fire kind of just starts again, like a little blaze, and then it becomes fully orange,” Sabeen says. Heart pounding, she immediately turned to her husband. “So I told my husband [to] turn around, like, let’s go. We were only like a minute away from our home,” she shares.

By the time they arrived, Marble was still pacing in front of the lens as if begging them to notice. “He still knew where the camera was, and he still came in front of it to get our attention,” she says.

Inside, the reality was less terrifying than the footage suggested. “Only to find out that the fire wasn’t as bad as it seemed on camera… it was just a little flame,” she explains. Still, they weren’t taking chances with lingering embers. “We sprinkled like my entire box of baking soda on top of it, and it was completely put out after that,” Sabeen tells PEOPLE.

Soon, the story leapt from private scare to public phenomenon. “I honestly posted that randomly on my way back home to Chicago to visit my mom,” she says.

At first, the reaction was manageable, but the views grew rapidly. “For me, even like 10,000 views is a lot, and then it hit a hundred thousand and then two, and then the comments were rolling in,” she remembers.

Those comments gave Marble an unforgettable chorus of imagined dialogue. “They were just like giving dialogues of like what Marble is saying in his head, like, ‘Mother, come back. Mother, the house is burning,’ ” she says with a laugh.

For Sabeen, it was surreal to see their household moment turned into internet lore. “We don’t have children right now, so like, it’s really funny how like we’re their mom and dad,” she shares.

During the two weeks spent in Chicago, she and her family refreshed their phones constantly. “It hit 1 million, 2 million… It’s still going to like almost 13 million right now,” she says.

The fire may have sparked the moment, but deep down, Sabeen wasn’t surprised her younger cat stole the show. “I mean, deep down I knew Marble would be the one that would send me viral,” she says.

Life at home reflects the two cats’ contrasting personalities. “Not so much Cheeto because [he’s] more like, oh shoot, there’s a problem, I’m gonna run away into the other room… and Marble is the one who kinda like faces everything,” she explains.

“I feel like he’s a lowkey, like a wild cat who likes to go towards danger,” she says.

Cheeto, an orange cat, shows affection sparingly, which makes it all the more prized. “When Cheeto does it to you, it just seems much more honorable because he doesn’t do that to anybody,” she adds.

Marble, meanwhile, is endlessly sociable. “He’s really rambunctious, he’s really, really friendly,” she shares.

The viral clip also sparked a wave of armchair safety commentary. “I know the camera also looks like my carpet is really, really close to the fireplace and like, my sofas really, really close, but that’s just the angle,” Sabeen says.

She wants people to know precautions were in place, even before Marble stepped up. “We have a whole like section of tiles, and then the wood floor, and then the carpet, and my sofa is like completely further away,” she clarifies.

Looking back, the near miss has changed how she treats every fire at home. “I will 100% think twice before even leaving it put out,” she admits.

She credits her Midwestern upbringing for knowing the basics, though her husband is less practiced. “I grew up [with a] fireplace at my parents’ house, but here I live down in California… my husband doesn’t know what a fireplace is,” she says.

Now, safety comes with new rituals, including keeping cameras trained on their pets. “We have a lot of Blink cameras all around the house… we are constantly like, we’re covered,” she says. Sometimes the setup helps neighbors, too. “The other day our neighbors’ bike got stolen, so they asked if they [could] use the footage,” she recalls.

The internet has also sparked one lingering confusion. “Everyone in like the comments thinks Marble’s a girl… but he’s definitely a boy,” Sabeen clarifies. She laughs that the family itself sometimes slips into calling him Miss Marble. “We also have the habit of calling him Miss Marble as a joke,” she admits.

“He was my husband’s birthday gift, and he’s just been since day one, the sweetest and most troublemaking cat I’ve ever met in my entire life,” she shares.

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Her phone is now filled with everyday clips of his antics. “Every day I’m snapping them some video of Marble doing something, bothering Cheeto, chasing after Cheeto, just rolling around,” she says. Even food isn’t safe from his mischief. “He’s obsessed with eating food — he loves to eat his own food, his brother’s food, our food,” she adds.

Through it all, Marble has remained the same spirited cat who first caught their attention. “It’s been great, he’s a good boy in the end, even though, like his troublemaking ways, it just keeps us on our toes,” Sabeen says.