Where were you when the lights went out? Or maybe the question should be, how many times did your power go out, and how badly did that throw a wrench into the works?
The Prowler was busy grooming the fur for some evening festivities when the multi-state power outage hit that sizzling Aug. 10 afternoon. Suddenly we learned new electrical terms like "Pacific intertie line" and "power grid." It's times like these that we're also forced to think about things we take for granted; air conditioning and microwaves come to mind.
Have you ever tried to let your fur--or hair--dry after a shower when your home is more like a sauna? Not a good idea. And whether you use your microwave for thawing TV dinners, reheating pizza or making tuna melts (what this cat wanted to eat that night), it's a sorely missed appliance.
Garage doors are another problem if you have a setup like the Prowler's. Thanks to a jury-rigged little mechanism added by a relative, the cat-car could not get out of the garage without an Olympian effort. It's just as well, though, since accident-packed traffic reports on the radio that night were enough to make even a wildcat afraid to venture outside. The Prowler is not that wild.
The Prowler is, however, a pretty enthusiastic fan of computers, but those become about as useful as an eight-track tape in a CD player when there's no electricity. But seriously, if the power goes out when you're using the computer, turn it off. Even if you have one of those supposedly surge-supressing strips, the juice blast when the power comes back from a major outage may be more than your equipment bargained for.
The one good thing about blackouts is the way they bring folks together. Call it mushy, but it makes the Prowler purr to see kids playing outdoors and neighbors holding impromptu backyard barbecues when there's no power flowing inside.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, August 21, 1996.
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