By Kenneth Heard
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
BLYTHEVILLE, Ark. &mdash An electrical short caused a Thursday morning fire that destroyed a Mississippi County veterinarian clinic and killed 35 animals housed there, a fire marshal’s report indicates.
A fire that began a little after 1 a.m. ravaged B.R. Cato’s clinic just north of the Blytheville city limits on Arkansas 61. Thirty-five cats and dogs that were in locked kennels died of smoke inhalation, Blytheville Fire Marshal Ivory Diamond said.
An initial investigation Friday revealed that the fire was electrical, Diamond said. Inspectors will continue their investigations through this week to determine an exact cause, he said.
Mississippi County sheriff’s deputies assisted in the investigation Thursday and Friday, said Capt. Ed Guthrie.
“We have ruled out arson,” Guthrie said. “They [investigators] determined it was electrical. Now, we’re trying to find out what exactly it was.” The clinic had several machines used during surgeries, and Cato stored chemicals there, Diamond said, which may have aided in the spread of the fire.
The building, which was more than 50 years old, was destroyed.
Cato, who opened the clinic in 1998, resumed business in a building next to the burned clinic Friday morning.
Police said 35 animals that either had surgery, were scheduled for surgery or were boarded there while pet owners were away perished in the fire. Police originally estimated that 40 animals died. Cato and clinic employees counted the animals Thursday and notified owners using records of which pens the animals were kept in to identify the pets.
“It was a horrible, horrible sight,” Diamond said.
Fire officials allowed owners to have their pets’ bodies for burial Friday morning, Diamond said.
“For a lot of people, those pets were part of their family,” he said.
Jennette Thomas of Blytheville lost her dog, an 8-year-old Shih Tzu named Lloyd Christmas after a character in the 1994 movie Dumb and Dumber.
Thomas took the dog to Cato’s clinic Wednesday to have a lump behind its ear removed, she said.
“He was so sweet,” she said of her pet, whom she plans to bury in her backyard. “He was our baby. I sure wish I would have taken him home instead of leaving him overnight before the surgery.”
Copyright 2008 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.