Living amongst nature has its…well, its costly moments.

When our cats were younger and more agile, they would leap from the carpeted floor to the carpeted cat tree to a tower speaker to the stereo equipment cabinet and on top of our 55-inch Toshiba projection TV monstrosity of a box.

As cats are wont to do, especially in the most inconvenient places, they would vomit while on top of the TV.

Cleaning the front of the TV is easy.

However, when the cats hurled their abuse behind the TV, it was a…less than…than getting an act of Congress passed to clean up the resulting mayhem.

I would wipe up the drying detritus but had at one lazy moment or two, not wiped the dangling wires clean.

Enter the dragon.

Or, rather, Rattus roofus, with teeth like dragons, and an appetite to match.

I did mention that rats had chewed their way into our cabin in the woods, right?  Our respite of domestic bliss?

Well, if not, your reading previous posts will not matter because the matter at hand is what’s the matter.

One spark away from a burned-down domicile’s what I’m talking about.

We have had no cable service in our living room for several days (about four or five).  I had worked with our cable service provider to no avail and will seek reimbursement for the inconvenience once we tally the days without cable service should service ever get restored.

In the meantime, I traced the physical cables behind the stereo equipment cabinet and found a chewed coax cable that was connected to the TV’s TV Out port but nothing else (the cable from wall to converter box and from converter box to TV was fine).

Not only that but the power cable to the TV was nearly chewed in two.  Amazingly enough, a single strand of copper was all that kept power going to the TV and the darn thing still worked!

Of the dozen or so cables, only three were chewed (the third: a wire to the left rear speaker of our 5.1 surround sound system was chewed in half).

Examining the chewed places, they seemed to correspond to where the cats’ spewed displeasure had dropped and dried.

Cats and rats and emesis…mmm!  Sure as you’re born.  Oh yeah, don’t you forget the unicorn.

Cables repaired.  Waiting on our cable TV provider to activate our new box.

Meanwhile, Roku entertains via Pandora.