Unintended Consequences

So it's all just a matter of how we look at things: I could either wallow in self-pity, or rise up and solve one by one each of the little crises life has thrown me lately.

Today I chose the latter. Bravely (and gingerly) putting on shoes and socks, I drove to work, no small accomplishment right there, and did the best that I could do, with one leg propped up at all times to aid the circulation in my burned feet. During lunch, I went over to the bank and asked why my debit card kept getting denied.

After consulting with the computer, the teller told me that there's a "Hold" placed on my account.

"Why?," I asked.

"Ummm, it looks like someone was accessing your account up in New York."

Well, that would have been me. The teller told me that a note on my account said that a letter has been sent to my house informing me of "possible fraudulent activity" and of my frozen account. I thought that sounded awfully provincial (out of state usage being considered evidence of possible fraud), and wondered why they wouldn't just call me rather than send a letter, but I calmly told her that there has been no fraud, just business travel, and she was able to un-freeze my account then and there.

Fine. One problem solved. I then called my friendly, neighborhood plumber and arranged for someone to come over and fix the leak behind the fridge. He was, naturally, 45 minutes late for our appointment but no problem - I was able to work from home while I had been waiting.

I gave him some time to poke and pull and scratch around, and within a few minutes he yelled out that he had found the problem. "When I pulled the refrigerator out from the wall," he said, "A big old rat jumped out from behind, and he's what chewed through your water line for the ice maker!" He wanted to show me the damage to the water line, but I was much more interested in where that "big old rat" had run off to. The plumber pointed to beneath the laundry room door, maybe a half-inch clearance, and I realized the old rat couldn't have been all that big, and that it was more likely a little mouse. But how could a mouse or, for that matter, a big old rat, come to be inside of my house and behind my refrigerator?

ELIOT!

The trap door that used to let my cat come and go freely and of his own will had long been closed ever since he starting demonstrating a proclivity toward bringing live animals into the house with him - mostly chipmunks, but also mice, shrews, birds, even a big old dragonfly one time. This was not acceptable, so for the past several months, Eliot can only come into the house when I let him, and that's when his mouth is vermin-free.

But when I went off to New York for several days, I left the trap door open so that he wasn't trapped alone in the house all day. I assumed that I'd broken him of the chipmunk habit as several months had passed and besides, he mostly brought them in to share with me when I was home. But it seems that there were, as always, unintended consequences of my actions.

When I came home last Sunday night, I saw the initial evidence of the first consequence. One of the two food bowls I had left filled for the cat was empty and in the middle of the kitchen floor, a good five feet from where I had left it. I thought that was odd but didn't give it much thought. But on Monday night, I heard a scratching sound from the now-locked trap door, and looking outside, I saw a raccoon trying to use the door to get inside.

This was a definite first. It seems that while I was gone, the local raccoons learned about the door, maybe by having seen Eliot himself using it. I can then surmise that they came into the house and started eating the cat food from the one bowl, and that Eliot then drove them out before they ate all of his food (and whatever else they could find in my kitchen). It was, most likely, a feisty encounter - housecat versus raccoon - but Eliot seems none the worse for wear, and my kitchen and most of Eliot's food seems to have been spared their pillaging. So score one for Eliot.

The other consequence apparently gnawed its way through the water line behind the refrigerator. The rodent (I haven't caught it, so I can't speciate the critter yet) couldn't have come in with Eliot before I had left (I'd have seen it), and couldn't have been left over from the months-ago time of the cat's open access to the outdoors. It's more likely that Eliot dragged the critter in with him one day while I was out of town and then lost him behind the refrigerator, and while holed up back there, it gnawed through the line and eventually cost me $129.

I keep putting Eliot into the pantries today to try and flush the rodent out, before he goes back behind the fridge and does some more damage. But the cat's not interested and/or the pest has gone elsewhere, but Eliot has now totally and irrevocably lost his trap-door privileges - I hope that he gets used to being a house cat next time I'm out of town.

Let's see, other problems . . . the feet are still burned but slowly healing (a little bit better every day) and my salary's still dinged, but there's nothing much I can do about that in the short term. The barn's still damaged, but after paying the plumbers, I may wait a while before hiring some one else to fix the roof.

With any luck, I might be able to do zazen by this weekend.