ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Sometimes It's Not Electrical

Long story made short.
A friend Carla, 73, turned into driveway and noticed light in upper BR. Light went off. Called 911. Police found nothing. Home secure. Same thing about a week later. Also has found light on in A.M.
A friend and I checked practically every connection in the house. We removed switches, recpts, etc and checked connections. Put recording voltmeter on incoming. Found no problem at any point.
Carla believed it was her dead husband’s ghost. Very frightened.
Ed and I borrowed an infra red video camera w/a motion activator and set it in the upper BR.
We got the culprit on tape. It was Carla’s cat. Removed the P&S Decora and installed a standard toggle. Problem solved.
Rowdy

A dog would never scare their caretaker like that!

Dave

Ah, now that's just mean. Kitty figured out how to have some control over his environment, and you took it away.

I have had cats that learn to use door-knobs, and freak me out in the middle of the night, when I think someone has broken in. As for light switches, I thought they had good night-vision, and wouldn't need it?

Heres a few other things I'd like to see a cat learn...

My kitty needs to learn how to clean his own litter box!

Maybe he could be trained to pull wire too? Hmmm..... "Now I'm gonna tie this to your tail, and you go put it on the fish in the attic. Meow when you're ready to feed it in."

I've heard that they actually do use ferrets to pull wires through conduit in the UK. Can any of our UKish members confirm that?

solarpowered said:
If I did that to my cat (Gizmo) he'd tear me a new one!!

He already knows how to use the AMX touchscreen, I had to program two start pages to keep him from turning on the whole theatre system!!

edited for spelling

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 02-01-2005).]

Shame on you, Rowdy, for ruining a fantastic mystery by letting the cat out of the bag. Is this house located in the catskills mountains? lol
ron

Great story! Those of you who have never had cats around would be surprised at just how much they can learn to do. He's never pulled cables, but mine does like to venture into the attic to inspect if I go up there for anything.

Never seen it, but I suppose it's possible. Maybe up in Yorkshire?!

Note for American readers:
We southerners often jokingly call this northern county "Flat cap and ferret country," in reference to the stereotypical image of the local headwear and habit of keeping pet ferrets.