Busted: A cat caught white pawed and how we thought we struck oil

A tiny pool of viscous brown liquid oozed up from beneath our basement floor. “It’s back,” I said. Leah was kneeling on the ground, working a trowel and laying tiles when she said: “What’s back?” I just pointed.

We had seen this before and we thought some bottle of some chemical must have leaked. But the room is now empty expect for us, a few loose tiles and a bucket of mortar. We ran through the options. Maybe it is ground water or maybe the sewer line is cracked. Then Leah said: “Maybe we're sitting on an oil field.”

We quickly devised a plan to secretly construct a tiny oil derrick in our basement to pump out the liquid gold before any of our neighbors caught on. Genius really. Step one: remove the nasty linoleum tile and see what we could see.

Turns out it wasn’t oil or sewage or ground water. It was floor cleaner mixed with old linoleum glue. Apparently this section of the floor was not secured to the concrete as well as the rest of the basement. This put a major crimp in our tiling plans. We had to stop everything and tear out about 10 tiles. Good thing we did too, because that nasty brown liquid was pooled under a few of them.

Then I had to mix up some mortar and use it to try to level out the floor. While I was at it, I thought I would spread a thin layer in the two closets we are planning to tile as well. With the patch made, Leah and I moved on to other projects like planting a few flowers and fixing our rickety garage door.

Afterward, we returned to the basement to inspect my work and see how well the patch was drying. Someone, or more appropriately, some animal had beaten us to it.




Leah went to investigate. It didn’t long to figure out which of our two cats was the culprit. We caught Georgette white pawed.



Our cat wasn't the only ones who had left their mark in the mortar. We are really glad she didn't mess up our own artistic addition. The plan is to return to tiling tomorrow once this stuff finally hardens up, until then Ralph and Georgette are banished from the basement.