WARWICK — A woman trapped in her small Cape home early yesterday as a fire burned on the first floor was rescued by a neighbor who heard her cries and raised a ladder to a second-floor window.

Battalion chief David Goslin said the woman, identified by neighbors and city tax records as Shelley G. Green, 52, was awakened by a smoke detector about 5:45 a.m. and went downstairs to discover a blaze in the front room of her house at 59 Aberdeen Ave. Green went back upstairs, broke a window in the bathroom and began screaming for help, Goslin said.

Jack Brennan, who lives behind Green, heard the screams. He told his wife to call 911, said Goslin, and then raced over to the house.

Brenan raised a ladder and got Green out of the bathroom window and down the ladder. ‘He did a very good job,” Goslin said.

The cause of the fire, said Goslin, was an overloaded electrical outlet.

A cat died in the fire.

In an earlier fire yesterday morning in Warwick, firefighters forced their way into an apartment at 55 Masthead Drive where they found a middle-aged man overcome by smoke from a fire that had started from something he had left cooking on the stove.

Fire officials would not identify the man who was in fair condition when transported to Rhode Island Hospital shortly after broke out, at about 2 a.m.

Firefighters extinguished the fire within minutes.