Rats redux: round two

Yesterday morning, my daughter sounded the alarm. "There's water dripping from the basement ceiling!" We quickly sprung into action, rolling up carpets, moving furniture and books, laying down towels and positioning buckets. We'd been there before, just six weeks earlier, so we knew exactly what to do and what had happened: rats had chewed through a water pipe—again! 

The first time, identifying the leak required taking down a good part of the basement ceiling, which was only just recently fully repaired, at considerable expense. Now, we have a new hole and water damage to the newly installed ceiling. And a huge mess to clean up—again!. 

Fortunately, this second leak wasn't as calamitous as the first because the plumber had installed shut-off valves on every water line when he fixed the first leak. At the time, my husband complained that this was excessive, but instead of having to turn off the water to the entire house as we did the first time, we were able to isolate the leaking pipe right away and keep the water on everywhere else.

We knew we had rats, of course. Before our (late) cat went blind, he used to sit on the deck and watch , fascinated, as the rats boldly helped themselves to the cat kibble from the bowls we put out for the raccoons. Since our cat was too old, or perhaps too smart, to go after the rats, they blithely ignored him even though he was mere inches away.