I may have called her a “piggly-wig” as she meowed to me at the stairs. Assuming she was upset about an empty food container, I continued my lecture as I followed her downstairs, letting her know that she was one of the few unaffected by the global pandemic and that while I understood it was winter, that was no reason to eat her entire container of food quite that quickly. Charlotte ignored the speech, as felines are prone to do. She led me down the stairs and to the gate that separates the front room from the rest of the unfinished basement, where her food, water and litter box are kept. And although it’s set up for her to easily go under, she stopped at the gate and just looked at me as if to make sure I was done with the lecture. I opened the gate and stepped around to turn on the light noticing Charlotte hadn’t moved far from the gate herself. With the light on, I realized why. There was water everywhere.
And this is when I began apologizing to the cat.
Her food bowl was still quite full as was her water. I could see both from the distance, but there was water seeping from the water heater area across much of the room.
I called for James, who quickly figured out the float on the water softener had failed and thus allowing for quite an overflow. Truthfully, had it not been for Charlotte, it could have been quite a few days before we would have been back down to check on her food and who knows how much water might have overflowed by then.
We only had a few wet things, which we set up on boards to dry. Nothing major was damaged and the shop vac made clean up a breeze (I say as if I had anything to do with it. James did it all and assured me he didn’t need any help.)
Charlotte might drive us crazy with her in-out-in-out-in-out indecisiveness, but saving us a major mess earns her all kinds of rights to change her mind and come and go as she pleases for awhile. (I also shared a bit of cheese with her last night. I’m not sure she’s forgiven me for calling her a piggly-wig, but cheese always helps.) She knew something wasn’t right and she sat patiently on the steps and meowed until I was willing to follow her and see, all the while enduring insults about her misjudged eating habits.
Blessed Little Things 