After giving the bunnies their breakfast, I sat down at my laptop to begin my work day. It was then I noticed that all my e-mails had stopped at 5:32 AM and that I had lost my internet connection. So I go into the office and see that the lights on the cable modem are all off. “Tracey must have shut off the power on the surge protector because our home PC won’t boot”, I thought. But no, the computer starts up with a push of the power button (it doesn’t boot, it just runs). I’m looking at the cable modem, as dark and dead as Kelsey’s nuts, and a sick feeling comes over me. I pull on the power cord, and sure enough, it’s been bitten in half – Butterscotch’s first victim.

“Sonofabitch!”, I yell. It’s only 7:45, and the nearest Office Max won’t open for another hour and fifteen.

At 9 AM I’m at the Office Max, power cord in hand. “Got one of these?” I ask the sales clerk, who looks at me as if the question is far too complex to handle for someone who just started their workday three minutes earlier.

“Sorry, no, don’t know what to tell you.” Great. Last time I ever go into an Office Max.

I head over to a Staples I know is nearby. “Nope, we don’t carry that”, say the clerk, “but I’m sure you can find a replacement at Radio Shack.”

So now it’s 9:30 AM, and I never knew there were so many 15 MPH zones in Gilbert as I past school after school on my way to the Radio Shack.

“Got exactly what you’re looking for”, says the Radio Shack guy. For $19.95 I pick up an adjustable 5 / 7 / 9 / 12 volt power cord that looks just like the one I need.

At 9:45 I’m back home and attempt to use my new adjustable power cord on the cable modem. No luck, it doesn’t fit. Now I’m screwed. Supposedly, the computer guy is due any minute to either fix our home PC or at least create a copy of our hard drive for loading on the new computer (whenever we decide to pull the trigger on that). Without any internet I can’t do any real work, so I lay down for a few minutes to collect my thoughts.

I wake up 90 minutes later. No computer guy. I hear a noise in the next room, and sure enough, Butterscotch has leapt the fence again. I find her in the office heading towards the bottom of the bookcase and Gray’s Anatomy. I pick her up and deposit her back into her pen before she can do any further damage. I can tell she’s enjoying herself.

The phone rings. It’s the computer guy, telling me he can’t make it, his networking job is running into problems and he’d like to reschedule for Wednesday. I tell him that’s no problem – at least now I can fix my Linksys router power cord.

I know what you’re thinking: I thought you said it was the cable modem whose line had been bitten in two like that chick at the start of “Jaws”. You’re right, but somehow I got it in my head that it was the Linksys router whose power cord needed replacing. I go to Staples and learn from the same clerk who four hours earlier had sent me to Radio Shack that the new Linksys routers don’t work off of 12 volts but 5 volts, so I need to buy a new router. $70 dollars later I’m home and try to plug the Linksys power cord into the cable modem and realize what a jerk I am. It’s now 1:30 PM and I still need a power cord for my cable modem.

I call Cox Communications, our internet provider, and ask their technical support guy for advice. He directs me to an outlet store five miles down the road where he says they’ll replace my cable modem. I drive the five miles and enter the store only to realize I forgot to bring my power cord and the cable modem with me. I drive back home, grab the power cord and the cable modem, and head back. I realize this is the fourth time I’m traveling the same road today, and it’s not yet 2 PM.

There’s a huge line at the Cox Communications outlet store. They’ve got a very high-tech system there. One person on duty, you sign in at the front of the store (I was fifteenth in line) and the person on duty after helping each person in line has to walk from her station at the back of the store to front of the store where she crosses off with a pen the person she just helped and calls out the next name, then heads to the back of the store to help that person. And she does this over and over and over and over. I thought I was back in the 1950s.

Forty minutes later my name is called. It’s nearly three o’clock. I show the lady at the desk my cable modem and bitten cord. She says sweetly, “don’t worry about the cable modem, I have a power cord you can take for free.”

It’s 3:15 PM when I arrive back at the house. I plug the power cord into the back of the cable modem and it springs to life, green and orange lights burning brightly indicating life and connectivity and all those good things. I turn around and see that, yet again, there’s only Geronimo in the pen. I head into the office, and there Butterscotch is, sitting atop Gray’s Anatomy. I check all the cords under my office desk and thankfully all are intact. I put Butterscotch back in her pen and finally start work for the day.

Later, I find a combination of some boards and shelving in the garage and place them under the fence in Geronimo’s and Butterscotch’s pen, raising it by a whole two inches. It’s not much, but we’re hoping it’s enough to make Butterscotch think twice about escaping. We’ll see.