Furnace Trouble

I was curled up in the popasan chair reading when Andrew came into the living room and started futzing with the thermostat. I asked him what was up, and he replied by asking me if I’d remembered the furnace kicking on lately. Well, I hadn’t actually been paying attention, but no, I didn’t remember it coming on. Turns out the temperature was about 68 degrees (F), but the thermostat was set at 71 and the furnace was not currently on.

We went downstairs to check on the furnace. We followed the manufacturers instructions for troubleshooting, and came up empty. It was already starting to get dark outside, and the temperature in the house was dropping. The forecasted low for the evening was in the single digits…brrr. Andrew called around to various repair places, but no one was able to come out — there had been a cold snap over the past several days, so everyone’s furnace was on the blink.

In the end, we packed up the cats and headed off to the nearby Comfort Inn. We ordered pizza for dinner, and were ready to settle in for a warm night. Unfortunately, the cats were being bad, and we had forgotten to bring a spray bottle (our normal method of discipline). So, Andrew went back to the house to pick one up, along with a few other things we’d forgotten. The house was down to 58 degrees.

Oddly enough, while Andrew was home, one of the repair places called and told him that they were doing another job on our street in about 10 minutes. Would we like the repair man to stop by our place afterwards? Duh. Of course. It was already 9:45 PM, so the repair man didn’t make it to our house until at least 10:30 PM. But he was able to fix it. Yay!

Andrew came back to the hotel, since the house would take a while to warm up, and we would already have to pay for a full night.

About 12:30 AM, though, the cats had decided they’d had enough. Ares started meowing. Then Artemis started meowing. Then Duncan started picking at the door. Unfortunately, in all the furnace excitement, Andrew had forgotten to pack a spray bottle, so we were still without a way to discipline the cats. We tried calming them. We tried yelling at them. We tried everything we could think of. Then I declared that we were going home.

Sigh.

I love our cats. But the house was still cold.