So yesterday, after scooping Mister's corn-encrusted nuggets, Sean mentioned to me that he could hear that the pump seemed to still be running. I went downstairs to check, and sure enough, every few minutes I'd hear a solitary RRRRRR. We talked about it and decided that maybe we should just unplug the pump. What we didn't do, and probably should have done, was question why the pump was continuing to make the RRRRR sound in the first place.
They say hindsight is 20/20. In this case, they would be right.
We had a very full day of errands and strolling the neighborhood and chores, and when I got back from my last chore, I decided to go peek in on Mister. I really wish I had done that a little sooner.
I expected to see Mister curled up on the cat tree by the window, sound asleep. Instead, I walked in to find Mister standing in the middle of the floor in one of the last dry patches left. He looked up at me plaintively and gave a small, desperate meow. At first, I only noticed a little water. As we had gotten Mango out of the room earlier in the day (she was having some difficulty using the new litter in the litter box), I was puzzled as to why Mister was peeing on the floor. Then, it hit me. There was no way that ten cats could have produced that much liquid in that short a period of time.
The basement was flooding. From the toilet. Whose pump had been turned off, without us first investigating the cause of the frequent pumping. Turns out that there was a tiny little trickle that never quite quit. It was all well and good while the pump was still pumping, but when it wasn't...
I called Sean down for some backup. He tried to reassure me that at least the water coming out was clean. Unfortunately, wrong again. When I had checked the bowl earlier, there was a lone piece of poop floating at the top of the water, which had apparently been hiding out in the bottom of the bowl and never made it down on the last flush. Oh, joy.
I had been planning to go for a run after my errands, but instead, we spent the next hour or so mopping, vacuuming, and sopping up the wet basement. Poor Mister didn't know what to think. He was probably already plotting his escape to the high ground, and trying to figure out if he could scratch his way through a window. He was not amused by Sean's use of the Wet/Dry Shop Vac. Sean was right--it did get the water up faster than anything, but we found it was filling up approximately every four minutes and having to be emptied. I couldn't even tell you how many times we emptied that thing before we were done.
Mister, meanwhile, had actually made it to higher ground. At one point, I went looking for him and couldn't find him. I called to him, and he didn't respond. Finally, I saw that he had taken one of the ginormous leaps for which he is famous and landed in one of the built-in bookcases, which is extremely deep. He was hunkered down in there, a little over my eye level, from a vantage point that probably would have been very pleasant if it hadn't, just this one time, been so terrifying. I hoped he would someday forgive us for his near drowning followed by near destruction by Shop Vac.
We left the room with all four windows cracked just a few inches and all three fans going full blast. And of course, our trusty dehumidifier working overtime. I was dirty, wet, sweaty and my feet hurt. Definitely running was out, since we had dinner plans in less than two hours. So, I did the only logical thing to do when your feet hurt and your jangled nerves clearly need a bit of soothing.
I got a pedicure. It felt good. And Mister did eventually forgive us--right about the time we got home from our dinner plans. All seemed right in the world again.
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