It wasn't a bad dream. It was a real fire that woke Patti Moritz from her sleep shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday.

The hospital shift-worker was asleep in her upstairs bedroom when an alarming odour drifted from downstairs.

"It's a good thing I'm a light sleeper . . . I could smell a little bit of smoke and I bounced up," said Moritz while standing outside her home moments later.

She was holding a cat and was worried about her family's other pets as she watched firefighters from Cypress Avenue in North Kamloops.

When smoke began filling her half of the duplex at 226 Cypress Ave. there hadn't been enough time to round up all the pets, including several cats, two birds, a rat, a bearded dragon lizard and a dog.

Her teenage son and a friend had been home and she told them to call 911 as she rushed to check the laundry room, which was in flames.

"I tried putting it out but I couldn't get on top of it," Moritz told The Daily News.

Firefighters were on scene within minutes of the call.

"It was burning downstairs when we arrived. We knocked it down and contained the flame damage to the laundry room," said Kamloops Fire Rescue incident commander Mike Wallace.

Firefighters were keeping an eye out for the pets and were hoping for the best.

As crews wound down their response, Moritz was convinced most of the animals had been accounted for with the exception of a friend's cat that has a habit of going into hiding.

By Sunday morning, two windows were boarded up and the family was under the care of emergency social services.

Kamloops Fire Rescue assistant fire Chief Jeff Bell confirmed that all the pets except one cat was accounted for, and the family believed the cat was just hiding.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

Bell said an investigation and assessment of the damage hadn't yet been done but it seemed that most of the damage was related to smoke and that the structure was sound.

The other half of the duplex was unscathed.