A customer's cat taught me a new way to find a wire break

I was at a job in a big old house in the historic district last week, trying to find a break in a door sensor wire that ran through a finished wall. My tone generator and probe were giving me nothing but ghost readings, probably because of all the old knob and tube still in the walls. I was about to start cutting drywall when the homeowner's giant orange cat, named Marmalade, jumped up on a chair and started batting at the baseboard. I shooed him away, but he kept going back to the same spot and meowing. On a total whim, I pulled the baseboard off there, and sure enough, there was a clean break where a nail had been driven years ago. The cat must have heard the tiny sparking or felt the heat. I fixed it in ten minutes. Has anyone else ever had a pet point out a problem you couldn't find with your tools?

3 comments

3 Comments

olivias882mo ago

My buddy Mike had a similar thing happen on a rewire job in a 1920s bungalow. He was tracing a dead outlet for an hour, and the client's old beagle just sat and whined at one specific floor vent. Mike pulled the grate and found a chewed wire bundle from a past squirrel problem right in the duct. That dog saved him a ton of time.

grantcooper2mo ago

Animals can be weirdly good at finding electrical issues. I read about a cat that kept pawing at a warm outlet, which turned out to have a loose connection. Sometimes they notice things we miss.

richard_roberts8028d ago

Actually cats can't really hear sparking at those voltage levels, it's way too faint for their hearing range. More likely Marmalade was just drawn to the slight warmth coming through the baseboard from the broken wire.