Awful evening that may be ending well.

[nwhiker]

Punch line first: we found him.

Our dryer died two weeks ago and we bought a replacement motor. Last weekend when dh put it in, correctly (he's put in two before), it arced weirdly and blew the door switch. So we ordered a door switch.

Put that in today, and started the dryer up. The motor pretty much exploded, arcing all over the place and welding the door shut. Dh was able to rip the door open and yank apart the wiring harness.

Smoke everywhere in the laundry room.

I think we got a bad motor.

Anyhow, it was scary and loud, and smelly. I quickly got a floor fan to clear out the smoke from the laundry room, which is our interlock room. Things were happening very quickly, with Perry running downstairs to flip the breaker off and Linnea freaking out a bit.

I was 99% sure there was never a time when we didn't have cat containment, but when the excitement had died down.... No Twisp.

We searched the house. And searched it again. And again. Started searching outside. We enlisted the local neighbourhood kid posse to search, walked around calling him and shaking his food dish.

We put Auri outside in a carrier as Twisp-bait.

Nothing.

David was sitting in the cold on the deck, and I posted to NextDoor and craigslist. Then I wrote a post to the cat thread on a forum I'm on. I hit post. I heard something behind me. I turned around.

Twisp. At the top of the stairs.

Perry saw him too.

We both screamed TWISP! WHERE WERE YOU?! and I immediately yelled for dh and Linnea who was sobbing in bed. Twisp freaked out at our loud voices, and ran back downstairs. Linnea saw him.

Dh came in, and we.... couldn't find Twisp AGAIN. I think dh thought Perry, Linnea, and I had had a mass hallucination.

It took A LONG TIME, but we finally did locate him, in our basement storage area. VERY well hidden.

So yeah.

I'm still shaking. Between the dryer exploding (and freaking out that dh might have been hurt) and thinking my little ragmuffin of a lovebug was lost, it's been An Evening.

He's back hanging out with us, but he is most definitely NOT purring. And Twispie has a loud loud loud purr motor.

Poor little boy.

We'll keep an eye on him tomorrow, to make sure it was nothing more than just freaking out that sent him into hiding.

ETA Dh figured out what happened. It wasn't a bad motor. It was not clear documentation, and a confusing set of tabs on the motor (corresponding to numbers on the documentation). Without saying anything he showed me all the bits and asked me how I'd wire it, and yeah, I'd have made the same mistake. He IS going to be leave SERIOUS feedback about the documentation, though. He could have noticed if he'd pulled run a few extra and non-necessary diagnostic tests, he tells me, but he went on what looked logical according to what he had and NSM.