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?

2 comments

2 Comments

olivias884d 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.

grantcooper3d 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.