Today I treated a five month old kitten who had spent ten minutes in a running tumble dryer. In something of a minor miracle, when she arrived at the surgery with her (very distressed!) owners, she was a little bit hyperthermic, had some slight bleeding from her mouth and her tail was limp. Her heart was racing and she was panting a bit. After some chill-out time and some painkillers, she was back to normal, and even her tail had recovered function. She was very, very lucky. Kittens in tumble dryers very often die.
I'm surprised we don't see more of them, really. On a morning like we had today (for those of you not in the South West, we had about 10cm of snow overnight, and it was bitterly cold by local standards) a tumble dryer with an open door could be a very enticing place for a kitten to sleep. So, please, be careful (not just with tumble dryers - ovens (Agas and the like especially), washing machines and old fridges are just as dangerous) and keep places where animals could get trapped and injured closed and secured.
At least this was an accident, and not a misguided attempt to dry a cold wet animal. And all's well that ends well. Remember, towels and hair-dryers are wonderful inventions!
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