I pride myself in being a skeptic, a non-believer in the supernatural things, a despiser of horoscopes and Zodiac signs and a dismisser of the Chinese weird animal calendars. Once, a lady I was dating advised me that our Zodiac signs will never be happy together, so I had to break up with her right then an there, for obvious reasons. (I am a Libra,  Ladies, by the way).

Surprisingly, once in a long while, a series of strange coincidences puzzle even a non-believer like myself. It’s all the cat’s fault.

As some of you may know, I’ve been cursed with owning a cat. It is my personal conviction that if God would’ve dropped a cat in every Egyptian house, the number of plagues would’ve stopped at one and the Jews would’ve been on their way to the Promised Land without all the death, destruction and bloody frog precipitation, leaving horrified Egyptians in the dust. On the other hand, no one would’ve invented the Matzos.

So just like Job, I suffer. And just like him, I am not a cruel, evil man. That’s why when I was leaving for a ten-day trip, I arranged for someone to visit the cat, feed her and, most importantly, remove the smelly byproducts of cat’s existence.

Another interesting fact about me, is that I never use a door to get in the house and always enter through the garage. The cat’s caretaker knows the garage code so I’ve never bothered to give her a key, but few days before we were going to leave a thought crossed my mind. The mind drew a picture of a garage door failure, a long duration power outage, or some other household disaster, all of which would result in a dead cat. As promising and enticing as it sounded, that’s just not me. (Notice, Ladies – kind to pets). I managed to find a spare set of keys to the house, ensuring the cat’s little-deserved survival.

Nothing happened while we were gone. Instead, we came home from the airport to a power outage, which rendered my garage door opened useless. This is when I discovered that I don’t have one of the keys necessary to get into the house. Apparently, I never bothered to put a key to the storm door on my key chain. The storm door was installed over 2 years ago and obviously during that time I had no need to use that key. That marked the mystical occurrence number one. We had to wait on the driveway for two hours for the power to come back while the cat enjoyed the air-conditioning inside. (Yes, Ladies, I left the air conditioner running just for the cat – humane).

The next day I went to the hardware store and made 2 extra sets of keys. Last Saturday we came home late at night. The garage door wouldn’t open again. This time it was a busted spring, but I was prepared for the mystical occurrence number two with a brand new key. (Ladies, did you notice good planning here?).

To summarize: 10 years of problem-free garage door operations interrupted by two incidents in a week. Coincidence? Horoscope? A curse? My Chinese sign? (It’s a Rooster, Ladies, if you were dying to find out). I don’t know. But I am sure it’s the cat’s doing.

By the way, this post was written with a constant meowing and door scratching sound in the background. Cat never gives up trying to get what she wants.

If you are looking for a pet, for the love of all that is holy to you, do not get cat. It will break your garage door just to prove a point.