Tag: cats

Halfway through my daily walk, my wife drove out to met me.

“Mister, you are in big, big, big trouble,” she said.

Whenever she tells me that,  I rarely know what for.  But that is not nearly as important as how much trouble I am in, which is measured by the time that passes between learning I am in big, big, big trouble and learning why.

This time it was really bad, so I had to ask.

“What did I do now?”

“You locked me out of the house – ALL AFTERNOON!”

No, I didn’t.

What I did was lock the front door before going for a walk around the block. She was right about all afternoon though, because our block is six miles around.

“How was I supposed to get in?”

“With a key,” I suggested.

“Who carries keys anymore?”

She has a point. Metal keys are a thing of the past and my wife is a thoroughly modern woman. She carries a purse the size of Peru but can’t afford enough room in there for a key, instead she clips a remote to her car’s sun visor to get in and out of the garage.

Which usually works.

Until it doesn’t.

As she left earlier in the day, the garage door went up but it did not come down. Whenever that happens we justifiably blame the cats.

Around our place, the whrrrr and grind of a closing garage door becomes an irresistible lure for all the outside cats to rush in. As they scamper across the threshold, they break the electronic beam that jolts the door to a stop and sends the opener into a winking blinking fit of hysteria. It then becomes my job to rid the garage of cats before the door can be closed.

It is a ritual that neither party enjoys.

But this morning the garage door refused to go down. Instead the opener winked and clicked in total dismay and every time I hit the glowing button on the wall, the chain rumbled only a few inches before returning to its home position.

This was rather perplexing.

After hitting the button several times without result, I hit it several more times without result before resorting to cussing and stamping my feet, which only served as yet another irresistible lure for the outside cats to madly rush in again.  Eventually it dawned on me to disengaged the opener drive from the track and lower the door manually to keep the cats out.

I checked the alignment of the electronic eye and made sure nothing was binding the track – still, I couldn’t get it to work.

I was stumped.

So I did as I always do whenever I get stumped. I gave up. I taped a note to the door explaining the situation then locked the front door and took the dog for a two hour walk…. and that is when my wife came home early.

“You locked me out!” she repeated.

“You could have……” I started to say, then stopped myself.  When you are in big, big, big trouble, it is best just to say nothing and take your lumps.

“Give me your keys,” she said.

So I gave them to her.

She then roared off down the road.

By the time I got home, she had left again and locked the front door, I suppose to teach me a lesson – but with the garage opener disengaged, all I had to do was lift the door manually.

I found the problem, a sensor wire had jiggled loose from the back of the opener housing.  An easy fix.

When she returned later in the day, she didn’t ask how I got in and I didn’t tell her.  Whenever you are in big, big, big trouble, it is best just to say nothing…..