SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20221217-9AE62-2147351988. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Go Cat Cat Catcher Wand Cat Toy ("Teaser Cat Catcher Wand Cat Toy" by GO CAT FEATHER TOYS INC.; has a plastic wand about 1 foot in length, to which a thin braided metal wire about 2-3 feet in length is connected with a fake mouse attached to the other end of the wire.). Incident: We recently purchased the "Go Cat Teaser Cat Catcher Wand Cat Toy" from Petco, and our family enjoyed playing with our cat using the toy with no issues for the first couple weeks. Then our 5 year old daughter was playing with the cat using the toy in our basement. After about 5 minutes, some of the basement lights shut off unexpectedly, and our daughter said the cat toy broke. I checked our home electrical panel and noticed the breaker tripped on one of the basement circuits. Wondering what could have overloaded the circuit, I noticed the cover of one of the wall outlets was blackened as if from a small electrical fire. We realized when our daughter was swinging the aforementioned cat toy around with its metal wire, it accidentally got wedged between the wall outlet and the plug of the electronic dartboard in our basement. This caused a short circuit, a small electrical explosion at the wall outlet, and literally burned the wire of the cat toy in two. Luckily our circuit breaker functioned as it should and cut power with no injury to our daughter. We feel this cat toy should come with a warning that there is a shock hazard because of the metal wire, or at least a warning that it cannot be used by children without adult supervision. We realize this was a freak occurrence and not every hazard needs a warning. But it is not something that crossed our mind as parents, so we felt obligated to report this.