Ah the irony

When we moved in to this place, there was a security lock on our patio door. There's also a handle lock, so we never really bothered with the security lock -- no idea why, guess we're just trusting. Also, if you look into our living room there's nothing good to steal, and neighbours can see you if you try to jimmy the door for a load of books which won't get you any money, so you'd have to be pretty dumb to try it.

To be truthful the real reason we don't use it is that for some reason when we moved in the door shifted and the bolt no longer hit the hole quite right, and despite it being an easy fix we just weren't motivated to fix it.

But this last Friday, we decided we would do some fixin' up around these parts, and that was one thing we decided might be a good idea to have fixed.

Let me back up a moment here and add that we have, against our preference, been letting out one of the cats. We live in a high-traffic area, with raccoons and skunks, and a cat outside just seemed a very poor idea. But this one cat is EXTREMELY noisy, and he hasn't taken well to the newest member of the family, and has been making his displeasure known at 3am, sometimes for HOURS, and if you add that to a new baby and a preschooler who will wake if the cat howls and then not sleep and be a weepy mess all day ... well, you have a recipe for disaster, don't you? So we've opted to put the cat out at night. It's my hope that he'll soon realize, especially in the fall, that nighttime howling = being put outside = SUCKS and the behaviour will stop.

Anyway. So out goes the cat last night.

And this morning? the lock has seized up. We cannot get it open for love nor money nor WD-40. And the weather is definitely darkening. Oh, sure, I can go around and get him, but he's used to coming in that back door, so when I go round to get him, he often runs for the bushes (at least, that's what happened this morning when I went to give him food ... poor cat was starving!)

SO. I guess it's good that we have secure doors. We can't get out but NO ONE ELSE CAN GET IN. So hey! Success!! Not so much for the cat, but you can't have everything.