“So I opened up my water bill and freaked out,” Shawnee said. “Normally, it’s a pretty steady amount, and all of a sudden, my water bill is huge. Of course I wanted to know what was going on, so I called my Dad. He said “Girl, you need to get a plumber in there to take a look at this situation. You’ve got a leak in your pipes!”
Shawnee called her NYC plumber. They responded, and checked over Shawnee’s home carefully. “They even went down into the building basement and checked all those pipes,” Shawnee said. “Nothing was leaking. Everything looked fine. They checked the toilet, the shower, the dishwasher, everything – and it was all good.”
This was a true plumbing mystery. “I thought maybe it was an issue with the city, and that there was some kind of meter issue going on, where they weren’t reading the information properly,” Shawnee said. “Looking into that was a production: I couldn’t make the city understand that there was no way we were using that much water. It’s just me and my cat.”
Shawnee called her NYC plumber back. “We talked about things, and his recommendation was using the webcam that I have to keep an eye on my cat in a different position. I pointed it at the shower, nothing. But when I pointed it at the kitchen sink, guess what?” While she was working in her midtown office, Shawnee checked the webcam and discovered her cat was activating the kitchen’s touchless faucet. “Sometimes he’d take a drink, but mostly, I think he was just turning the water on for the entertainment value. He liked to watch it run!”
Shawnee chose to have her faucet replaced. “The touchless technology is cool,” she said, “but I know this cat is going to keep messing with it, and I can’t afford the water bill!” She wants all local pet lovers not to worry. “I invested some of the money I would have spent on water going down the drain on toys to keep his active imagination occupied!”
