Eight lives and counting: cat jumps from fifth floor of burning building

Feline leaps to the ground, bounces once and runs away

A cat terrified and impressed onlookers on Thursday when it took a leap out of the fifth-floor window of a burning building – and lived to tell the tale.

After arriving at the scene of an apartment fire in Chicago, firefighters entered the building to extinguish the blaze while department personnel filmed the exterior.

People on the ground gasped in horror as a black cat appeared through the billowing smoke at a window on the fifth floor and leapt.

The lucky feline cleared a wall at the base of the building, bounced once and ran off.

"It went under my car and hid until she felt better after a couple of minutes and came out and tried to scale the wall to get back in,” fire department spokesman Larry Langford said.

The cat could not be reached for comment, but one would imagine it would have something to say about the importance of staying paw-sitive in a difficult situation.