Do We Let the Cat Burn?

I remember clearly something Lester Goran told me in creative writing class once. He said if your house was burning down and it was a choice between saving your manuscript and saving your cat, a real author would save their cat.

The point he was trying to make was that all good writing comes from a well-spring of humanism. If we can sympathize with our cat over a bunch of paper then we can create characters with love.

But that brings up another good question. If we begin to sympathize with our characters as real people, do we then care for them as real people?

Do we then let the cat burn?