Cat Causes Power Outage Affecting Thousands

Thousands of New Orleans residents who lost power for more than an hour Monday have a cat to blame, USA Today reports. The animal got into one of Entergy New Orleans' substations, touched the equipment, and caused a flash. Outages started around 8:30am, and by noon, all customers saw their power restored. The cat did not survive. "It is unusual for a cat to get into a substation and around protective devices. When this happens, the animals unfortunately do not survive the high-voltage contact," Entergy said in a statement, noting that it installs protective devices to keep just such an incident from occurring, but on rare occasions an animal is able to get around them. (More strange stuff stories.)