CLAWS! Just when I thought it was safe…

Just when I thought things were simmering down with the animals in my household and that it was safe to get back in the…

Water. I was running the washing machine upstairs yesterday so I don't know how long this was going on, but as I walked past the powder room downstairs on my way out the front door to take my dog for his afternoon walk, I thought I heard water running.

"Must be the washer upstairs," I thought. But it didn't sound like the washer, which was actually sounding like it was in a part of some cycle where no water is running in or out of the tub. Still, "A leak from the washer?" I wondered.

Hoping it wasn't that, while speculating further what it might be, I went into the powder room to see if maybe the toilet handle needed a jiggle. But the noise was so loud in there it didn't sound like that either. I jiggled the handle anyway but could not hear the characteristic shift in that whistling sound the tank makes, which usually accompanies the float rising the way it should. Something behind me was louder. The sound of flowing water was coming from the sink.

As I turned around I saw that the sink was nearly overflowing, and the hot water handle was turned full throttle in the "on" position. My first thought was that I had been in there earlier in the day washing the dog's water bowl before refilling it and had somehow managed to forget to turn off the water. "I'm getting that senile?" was my next thought. But if I had filled the dog bowl, the cold water might have been left on, not the hot. Unless I was senile enough to put hot water in the dog's bowl; I've been so tired the past week, I supposed it was possible.

I shut off the spigot and opened the drain to let the water out. It drains amazingly fast when it's open, but the bowl also fills up almost as quickly when the faucet is opened up all the way. I was an inch from a hot water flood that would have surely precipitated my powder room remodel in the very near future. Was my subconscious playing games to fulfill my remodeling wish list? This was getting really, really scary -- very 1960's psychological-thriller scary…

Then I remembered that as I was headed down the stairs with the dog, the cats were on their way up the stairs in an awful hurry. They have been playing in the powder room a lot lately, and I've been applauding myself for figuring out how to keep the toilet paper out of their claws. But they must have one upped me.

Masterminded the plan

Committed the crime

Drove the getaway car

When I was having breakfast, I had heard them jumping off the toilet tank as well as in and out of the pedestal sink -- occasionally they even do a swan dive into the dog's water bowl and overturn it. The little monsters must have sat on the drain plunger and closed the drain, then somehow opened the hot water just by pushing it by accident. The lever is very easy to move -- not like the one-handled style faucet in the apartment I lived in before -- the one that I couldn't even turn on using both hands.

I guess I'll be making some vanity remodeling changes to the powder room sooner than I planned -- at least installing a different style faucet. Until then, "duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn…duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn…" CLAWS!