Every Day, He Wakes Up And Chooses Engineering

Too bad he's a cat.

This is the face Indy cat makes, while mommy explains why his attempts at fixing water fountains didn’t work….

So, the back story on this or “why has Sarah been absent THIS time?”

Oh, what a fun year 2024 is turning out to be. If it keeps this up, I’d best buy stock in a distillery, because I’m going to be putting a lot of stock in distillates, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

2024 started with a very cold snap. This is fine, as our house is actually pretty snug. But we kept hearing water running and being unable to figure out where it was or where it was running.

Well, a spot in the middle of the backyard, on the way to the shed, was becoming a swamp, which was inexplicable, given that it hadn’t rained/snowed that much.

Then after about two weeks, my husband went downstairs, and there was water dripping through the wall in the basement.

After three plumbers came by, we figured the main water into the house had snapped. Since it was four feet deep this remains semi-inexplicable.

But it was pouring gallons and gallons of mone— I mean water into turning our yard into swampland.

The repair took a week and a half (including the breaking of a cement patio and deconstruction of a porch I still have to rebuild with a friend’s help) to put a new line through. seeding the lawn will wait another couple of months. The yard is slowly starting to dry. Our bank account is already dry and I need to write a lot. As the late (great) David Drake told me, if you can solve it with money it’s not a problem. Problem is when it costs lives. So I’m not going to complain that loudly. We weren’t planning to spend a used car’s worth of money in January, but these things happen. Again, I need to write more.

However the sequel to this whole mess is that mud got into our house plumbing. For most of it it just meant a few days to flush everything out. But in the master shower it destroyed an already semi-destroyed and very old faucet and temperature adjustment.

The plumbers went beyond the call of duty and ordered the parts and did that repair for free. With the caveat that if it hadn’t worked and they’d had to take the tile apart, we’d probably have to replace the entire unit. (Which TBF we’d like to do at some time, but not forced and right now.

So we spent a week and a half showering downstairs. And then the nice young plumber came and replaced the faucet parts.

I knew this was going to be a problem.

Oh, not the faucet itself, but the fact that Indy was following the plumber around and watching intently. Given that this is the cat who every morning wakes up and chooses engineering I knew this would be a problem.

The manifestation and shape of the problem announced itself when we heard a series of weird sounds from the office where we have the water fountain for the kittens and Indy.

When I went up, Havey was standing by with the look he gives us when waiting for us to fix something for him. Looking Indy who was taking the water fountain apart.

I put it back together but couldn’t find the spout. I was, however, in the middle of writing a short story, so I came downstairs ranting, and sat down to work. After a while I heard very odd sounds from the dining room, where the larger water fountain is.

Again, Havey was waiting expectantly, while Indy was …. trying to fit an extra spout to the fountain, slightly hampered by the fact he only has two enormous paws and a mouth to help in the endeavor.

I retrieved the spout and realized that the fountain was out of water, so I refilled it, went and put the spout back upstairs. And then I got it.

Look, pretend you’re a very smart toddler. Say about 2. The spout upstairs is pourin water. The spout downstairs isn’t. Uncle Havey is upset. If you put the upstairs spout downstairs…. well, stands to reason, doesn’t it?

So, I caught up with the feline delinquent and tried to explain what was wrong with his engineering attempts.

From his expression, what are the chances he believed me? And what are the chances he’ll do it again?

Every morning he gets up and chooses engineering. If he weren’t a cat, he’d take us to the stars!