A Hiss, A Piss, A Screen Door, Roodneercsassipassiha

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For years my mom tried to convince my dad that a neighborhood cat was regularly peeing on their front door, thus explaining a discoloration at the door's base. The conversations would go something like this:

"I'm telling you, there's a cat peeing on the door. It pees on the screen and it's getting on the door."

"...uh huh."

Her theory was, of course, ridiculous, except for the fact that a cat has indeed been peeing on their front door. This was confirmed when my parents removed the screen door in anticipation of replacing it, and my dad found a puddle of cat piss in the doorway the next morning.

A couple of days later I was delivering pizzas when I noticed two strange devices plugged into a customer's porch outlet. They were dome-shaped objects about two inches around and extended about an inch from the outlet. At first I thought they might be nightlights, but then I remembered that is was night and not light. I asked the customer about them as he signed the receipt.

"Oh, those... we had voles," he said, and explained that the devices emitted a frequency that repelled the voles but didn't bother people.

"Do they work on cats?" I asked.

"On cats? I don't know," he said. "Out here we've got coyotes... those work on cats."

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John continued to explain the filter count change sheet.

"And here you'll circle N or A for whether it's actual or nominal."

I stared at the paper, and then at John. He continued.

"It's almost always going to be nominal. I don't think I've ever had to order a frame that was actually, you know, 20x25 or 16x20."

"I don't, know what you're talking about," I said. "What's nominal."

"Nominal? You know, 'nominal,' like with a 2x4?"

I stared at John, and then at the paper. He stared at me.

"I, um...," he said. "I don't know how to explain it in 'geek.'"