Home Invasion

We’ve been home invaded. Not just once, but everyday for the last three days! I don’t know what we’re going to do…

The first time was Sunday afternoon, I was getting ready to go to a birthday party for our neighbors twin’s when I noticed the uninvited guest boldly coming towards me up the basement stairs. He quickly turned tail and ran under the basement staircase where I could not reach him, but I could hear him fumbling around in the underbelly of the house. This was not a good thing. Thanks to my friend Nancy, who was able to get him to vacate the premises.

My second invasion took place Monday evening as I was watching the Showtime series Dexter. I kept hearing a noise that was not consistent with the action on the TV. It was a steady “Meow, meow, meow.” It took three instances of the meows to actually alert me to the home invader’s presence. Abby, who was snuggling with me on the couch, was completely unaware that there was an uninvited guest in the house. Some watch dog she’s turned out to be! Furthermore, she stayed snuggled under the blanket we shared, making me the one to chase said “guest” through the house and down the basement to get him finally leave.

Last night, I thought I was being smart by keeping the door to the basement closed, as this has been our invader’s entry point for each incident. However, this did not work for Abby, who uses the doggy door in the basement to come and go into the backyard. So about 8:30pm, I relented and opened the basement door so she could come and go at will. About a half hour later, I heard the same sound from Monday night, lo and behold, my intruder was back. Abby this time had the presence of mind to stop snuggling and glare at the intruder. She didn’t actually get up or do anything, that was my job, AGAIN, it seems.

So now what? Well, when we bought the doggy door a few years ago, we got one that was pretty high tech that came with a sensor for Abby’s collar and one for the door. The sensor would only open the door for any critter wearing the matching sensor on their collar, this keeping intruders out and  Abby’s been pretty good at managing the cats and squirrels in the yard, so we never replaced the battery on the collar sensor when it died. So then we thought, well if she’s managing the cats and squirrels in the yard, then does she really need to have that dead battery sensor around her neck? No? Okay, so we removed that from her collar.

You would think the solution would be simple, right? Just replace the battery in the collar sensor, put the sensor back on Abby’s collar and our home invasion problems should be solved. Right?

Now we just need to find the #@$!&%* collar sensor.