“Is everything okay?” Kev asked.

The fear he had of riding the green, double-looping coaster looming above his head was insignificant to the dread of seeing that number flash as the incoming call on his cellphone. Sweat pooled near the crown of Kev’s head, spilling into his eyes and down his spine…but it was not caused by the late-July Florida humidity. The void created by the hesitation in the response was filled with this haunting thought:  The cat is on the roof and it won’t come down.

Maybe Kev was wrong. Maybe it was nothing. He certainly did not own a cat.

Kev and Jess’s home is under construction. They are adding a couple of new rooms, new garage, literally raising the roof and putting a new one in place. They chose to remain in the house during the construction, which started two months ago and has at least as long to go. Their lives are in turmoil. They never know day to day what door might or might not be in service. They park their cars on what used to be their front lawn. They’ve gotten to know the crew of builders and tradesmen very well. Their two girls, Becca and Katie, were holding up pretty well, but the chaos that had started as an adventure was getting old after eight weeks. They were all ready for a break. A vacation in Orlando for a week would allow them to sleep in past 7:00AM without the drone of workers’ saws and hammers grinding and pounding all around.

In the heart of Universal Studios, standing under the Incredible Hulk roller coaster overlooking the central bay, Kev’s phone rang. It was Glenn, his builder. They had been in Florida only three days and it seemed odd that he’d be calling. With some trepidation, Kev answered and asked how things were going. After a brief, yet seemingly eternal pause, Glenn said, “Well, there was a storm here last night.”

When they had left their home for the airport, there was no roof on the front half of the house. The struts were in place, but nothing else. Kev asked Glenn if that was okay, especially if it should rain. Glenn assured him that it would be fine. They’d put a plastic tarp over it. Not to worry. Kev’s first thought when Glenn said storm was to worry.

“Is everything okay?” Kev asked.

“Well,” Glenn said. Then he hesitated, time stood still, and the real sweat started.

The cat was on the roof and it won’t come down.

Kev had gotten to know Glenn and his verbal mannerisms over the past few weeks of daily interaction. On one of the first days, when the concrete guy was digging in the backyard to put in the foundation for the new room, Glenn called Kev at work. Kev had asked if everything was okay and Glenn responded, “Well,” with the same intonation and subsequent hesitation he used now. It turned out that the estimate as to the depth needed to pour the foundation was off. They had to dig a foot deeper than they thought.

“What does that mean—budget-wise?” Kev asked.

“Well,” (awkward pause) “it’s going to cost an extra eight thousand dollars,” Glenn said. That was week one.

This same hitch in his voice was what Kev heard as he stared across the pond, Jurassic Park to the left, Dr. Seuss Landing to the right. “There was a little water damage,” Glenn finally admitted.

“Is it bad?” Kev asked. In my mind, the image of a waterfall was cascading into his home.

“No, no,” Glenn’s voice reassured.

Becca tapped Kev’s arm and quietly asked if they could go back to Hogwarts castle. Kev gave her the just a minute finger, which, to a child, is more offensive than the other one. “The tarp ripped loose,” Glenn continued, “but we got it tied down and everything cleaned up. Nothing to worry about.”

Okay, Kev thought, the cat was fine.

Later that evening at the hotel, Jess got a text from Deb, their neighbor back home.  We saw your builder out in the midst of the storm at 4:30AM on a ladder, the text read, The tarp was flapping madly in the wind. Is everything okay?

“You’d better call Glenn. Just to be sure,” Jess said.

So I called Glenn, just to be sure. “Yeah, like I said, I tied the tarp back down,” he said.

“Were you really there at 4:30 in the morning?” Kev asked.

“Well,” Glenn said, “it was a pretty nasty storm. It woke me up. I wanted to make sure the tarp was holding up in the wind, so I drove over to check it out. Good thing I did.”

“What do you mean?” Kev asked. Is the cat on the roof?! “I thought you said…”

“Everything is fine,” Glenn reassured. “I got it tied down. A little rain got in.” Again, the image of the waterfall. And that cat… “The insulation soaked most of it up,” he continued. “It’s under control. No worries. Enjoy your vacation.”

The cat was fine. Hell, there was no cat.

Jess was not convinced. The next day, she got more intel from the neighbor. It seemed that the giant, red, industrial-sized garbage dumpster in our front yard was filling up with wet refuse resembling our living room walls. Jess read the text to Kev, then looked at him. “Remember the waterfall?” she asked.

Of course he did.

It had only been four weeks earlier. Once the new foundation was finally poured, the four foot high crawlspace and concrete floor under the addition looked like an in-ground swimming pool just off the kitchen. Except they cut a five foot wide hole in the existing foundation of the house to tie in the new crawlspace. At the time, Kev said to Glenn, “What if rain gets in there?” thinking how an in-ground swimming pool would easily flood the crawlspace and lower-level finished family room.

“Oh, your sump pump should handle that,” Glenn assured him.

Jess and Kev have lived in the house for fifteen years. In that time, they endured many storms where their neighbors were flooded, yet they remained dry. Probably because their home is a split level and only goes four feet below grade as opposed to the neighbors’ full basements. In that fifteen years, their sump pump never went on. Not once. It was like the appendix of the house, dangling in the back corner of the laundry room gathering dust and cobwebs. Luckily, they remained rain free for enough days to have the sub-floor and walls added over the new crawlspace.

But the roof over that section of the house was still a work in progress on the night they went out with friends to a local pub in town. They had dinner and a drink and were about to leave when suddenly it started pouring outside. They hadn’t thought to bring umbrellas as it was one of those summer storms that came out of nowhere. They were seated by a window and decided to order another drink while they waited out the worst of it. Two drinks later, the rain continued full downpour. So they opted to brave the weather and run to the car.

Their friends, Dave and Amy, pulled into the expanding mud hole that was once their driveway to drop them off. As if mocking them, the rain came down even harder. So, again, they waited for a break. But after a few minutes, the extra drinks started weighing heavily on everyone’s bladders. “I have really got to pee!” Jess said. “And this downpour is not helping the situation!”

“Well, if we are going to get soaked one way or another,” Kev said, “I vote for refreshing rain over the more embarrassing alternative!”

“There’s an image!” Dave said.

“Wow, I really gotta go now, too!” Amy added.

Everyone laughed. Kev counted down from three, opened the door and bolted through the muddy puddles toward their front door, with Jess slipping and laughing right behind. They got soaked, but then got inside, and each of them made a bee-line to the bathrooms, Kev heading downstairs and Jess running up. After relieving their ripe bladders, they met in the middle of the house and looked out their former back door, into the skeleton of the new addition.

What used to be the back wall of the house was now one wall of the hallway leading to the new bedroom, bath and garage. There was a gap almost a foot wide between the new roof and the old one and the old gutter was still attached to the house just above the door frame and running down the length of the new hallway. The downspout had been removed because who needs a downspout in your hallway? Though the new roof and gutter had not been installed, that did not deter the rain hitting the old roof from doing what it does…flow. The hole where the downspout had been now gushed forth gallons of water onto the sub-floor of the new hallway. Coincidentally, this was directly above the five foot wide cut-through in the old foundation.

Jess and Kev did the math, gave each other a panicked look, then, without discussion, made a mad, somewhat intoxicated crawl to the back corner of the crawlspace. There they were greeted by a curtain of water separating the old crawlspace from the new like a roaring waterfall at a state park, the full five feet wide. They stared in awe, as you would at any wonder of Mother Nature. No matter how terrifying or devastating, you had to be impressed at some level, be it earthquake, hurricane or indoor waterfall.

While the new crawlspace had concrete floors (like the bottom of a swimming pool), the old crawlspace floor was pea gravel over dirt. Unlike the barren new crawlspace, the old was jammed to the gills with stuff. Christmas decorations and wrapping paper, old clothes, old files, old toys, old books…stuff. Full.

But Glenn was right, the ground drank the rain and flowed it back to the appendix/sump pump. Kev and Jess quickly crawled there next and removed the metal cover to watch it working.

It wasn’t.

Oh, water was flowing in, they could see that. But the sump pump had seemingly died without ever knowing the joy of fulfilling its primary function. Kev extracted the device. He unplugged it and plugged it back in, but it only whined a little and not much more. He completed the appendectomy by disconnecting it from the power and the “L” shaped pipe coming out of the four foot deep hole (slowly filling with water) and emptied (in theory) through the wall into the back yard. The waterline in the sump pump hole was still a good eighteen inches from spilling over into their finished downstairs family room, but the surface crept toward the upper edge, not way from it, indicating that the incoming torrent outpaced the ground’s ability to soak it in.

Oh, and it was just after 1:00AM. And they had been drinking. While the events were certainly sobering, they didn’t completely alleviate the effect of the extra couple of drinks at the pub. Alcohol coursed through their blood like the rain water through the downspout hole. Jess deployed her smartphone to find the hours of the area hardware stores. Home Depot opened first at 6:00 AM. Five hours to sober up. Five hours without a sump pump.

Kev decided not to wait. He attacked the source of the problem.

Because Kev hates to throw anything away (remember the crawlspace packed to the gills?), he had salvaged the discarded gutters and downspouts dispatched by the workers and stored them in the playhouse section of the swing set in the back yard. Who knows? He might be able to use these for something someday. Like today. Kev grabbed a flashlight and staggered out the back door to the play/storehouse. Their home is on a small hill, draining the rain naturally away from the house, so the back part of our property, where the swing set was located, was becoming less yard, more pond. Fortunately, Kev was pre-soaked from all the evening’s earlier adventures so the rain didn’t bother him. He reached the playhouse and pulled a few key pieces of metal and sloshed back to the addition.

Outside the former back door, in the new hallway, the water spilled not only from the downspout-less hole, but also over the edge of the gutter. There must have been a clog. Kev spotted a step ladder in the new bedroom. It was easy, since there were only studs, no actual walls. He poked his head through the opening to the sky and directed the flashlight into the gutter. Sure enough, a huge wad of leaves, seeds, and branches was damming the gutter, creating the overspill. Kev scooped the slop out and tossed it onto the sub-floor of the new hallway. Now the flow of the water pouring from the downspout-less hole increased dramatically.

Kev jumped down from the ladder and looked at the leftover gutter/downspout pieces. He needed to move the water from the open, operational gutter hole, through the hallway, and out the new back door to the yard. His years of playing with LEGOs were suddenly paying off in this dark, intoxicated, soggy moment. Kev had multiple drain pipe elbow pieces, bending various directions. He connected a long drain-pipe to the gushing hole at one end and a bendy elbow piece at the other. He inserted that piece into another drainpipe that emptied into a former length of gutter, running about twelve feet down the hallway and out the new back door into the ever expanding pond. Kev had effectively cut the indoor waterfall supply off. He was so focused on the task at hand that standing on a ladder holding big pieces of aluminum in the middle of a thunderstorm didn’t strike him as dangerous. Luckily, that wasn’t the only thing that didn’t strike him.

Back at the sump-pumpless hole, the water level was still rising (bad) but wasn’t rising as quickly (good). Kev grabbed a bucket and started bailing water out of the hole and into the nearby laundry sink. He bailed eight to ten gallons, got it down so that he could see the sub-system pouring water in. He did a quick calculation and thought (a) he would need to bail water again, possibly a few times before 6:00AM, but (b) probably had some time for some needed rest right then. So he changed into dry clothes, set the alarm and tried to sleep.

He didn’t sleep.

Kev laid awake. The rational part of his mind, calmly calculating that he had plenty of time before the need to bail again, wrestled with the panicked part of his mind, listening to the endless downpour on the roof conjuring the image of the sump-pump hole over-flowing and ruining the family room. After forty-five minutes of the internal debate, he went downstairs and bailed again, repeating the vigilant process every forty-five minutes until 5:45AM. The rain abated a bit, but still came down steadily as Kev navigated up rivers and down streams en route to the Home Depot. At ten minutes before six, people were already trickling into the store. Kev was greeted at the entrance by an employee who asked simply, “Sump pump?” Kev must have had that five-hour-bailing look, he thought. He nodded in the affirmative. “Aisle 18.”

Kev followed the stream of other pumpless patrons flowing to aisle 18. There, two more helpful employees stood ready with a choice of four to five options, based on price and capacity. Kev was suffering from a bit of sensory overload. After spending that last five hours slowly sobering via the monotonous action of draining the hole in the dimness of his house, the bright lights and cheery dispositions at the Home Depot were almost too much. Especially before his first cup of coffee. Decisions had come quickly in the night. Do this now before things get worse. Choosing between five pumps was too much to bear. Then he remembered, he didn’t have time to waste. The hole was filling again back home. Kev couldn’t be certain that Jess was manning the bailing bucket. He chose the mid-range price/capacity pump and was back in the car wading home before six.

Back at the ranch, Kev found Jess dutifully bailing, the water near to cresting the edge again. He ripped open the box of his new mid-range priced/capacity toy. Jess put the bucket down and asked, “Do you know what you’re doing?” Exactly the kind of confidence-deflating moment Kev needed right then. He had no idea what he was doing. But how tough could this be? Foregoing a verbal response, Kev attached the pump to the “L” shaped pipe and lowered it into the drink.

Interesting construction side note: they needed to add a new electric panel as part of the addition. The most logical place to install it was on the back wall, right next to the sump pump pipe exit. This was in violation of the village code, but the inspector saw that there was no easy way around it, and grandfathered us in as an exception.

Immediately after plugging in the new pump, the force from the water bucked the end of the pipe back into the inside of the house. Water was spraying everywhere, but in particular, right at the newly installed electric panel, like a fire hose on full blast. Kev jumped at the cord and sparks flew through the saturated air as it disconnected from the outlet. A little inside lightning. Fun. The stream went limp. Kev carefully inserted the pipe back into the hole in the back wall of the house from whence it came and told Jess to hold it in place. She didn’t like the plan, not at all, but Kev didn’t have a better one. He wiped the water dripping from the cord and plugged it in. It roared back to life. The pipe bucked, but Jess held it in place. Kev quickly assembled a makeshift Jess out of a chair and some wood so she wouldn’t have to stand there all day.

The water drained quickly. All was saved.

Except the water pumping outside was going right down into the exposed foundation. It needed to be farther away from the house, to the back pond. A flex hose (like his neighbors had) would be perfect, but Kev didn’t have one because he never needed one before! But he did have another ten feet of discarded gutter in the playhouse.

The dark sky was now morning and the pond now a lake. Kev sank mid-calf as he waded out to the playhouse/gutter supply. It was here, after a wickedly sobering, sleepless night of bailing and pump bucking, standing in the middle of a small lake lined by tall cottonwood trees holding a ten foot aluminum gutter that Kev realized his vulnerability as lightning continued to strike in the vicinity. In a panic, he prayed to God to protect a fool, launched the gutter at the back door, and sloshed quickly out of the kill zone.

You know those little plastic coated wires that toys like Barbies and Fisher Price Little People and any other toy frozen in some marketing director’s idea of the perfectly posed packaged scene come entwined in? Kev saves those, too. He keeps them in a shoebox. They are handy for all sorts of things, like attaching lights to evergreen swags at Christmas, keeping the thorny rose bush tendrils secured to the fencing instead of growing dangerously wild in all directions, and, it turns out, tying the gutter to the extruding sump pump exhaust pipe. It continued to gush forth a gallon or two every thirty seconds. The water ran away from the house, into their new lake. Victory: Round one of Rain vs. Construction.

Back in Florida, round two remained undecided. With the image of the recently vanquished waterfall in mind, the thought of a new one flowing through the living room was starting to stress Jess and Kev out. The cat may be on the roof. Or worse. They called Glenn again. Kev put him on speaker for Jess to listen in.  “A little water damage,” he repeated. “Insulation soaked most of it up. We replaced that. A little drywall damage, but we were going to replace most of that front wall anyway when we put in the new window.”

“So, under control?” Kev asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “No worries. Enjoy your vacation. Just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be surprised when you got home.”

They were satisfied. He was calm, reassuring. There was nothing they could do. There was some damage. Glenn’s taking care of it. No reason to stress about something beyond their control.

So they forgot about waterfalls and cats and enjoyed the last few days of vacation. No more calls to or from home.

But when they got home and walked in the front door…well, it did not look okay. The neighbors confirmed in person and greater detail that the storm had been brutal and that the tarp had ripped completely away from one corner at the height of the storm. Glenn had arrived on the scene early, still mid-storm, fighting to batten down the hatches. Clean up had gone all that day and the following with giant fans blowing and wet insulation and drywall going. Kev and Jess had expected some damage, but not this. Three of the four walls had severe water damage, paint bulging and peeling halfway down each wall. The ceiling drywall had already been replaced along with the insulation above it. It had been bad.

The cat was dead.

Glenn had lied to them. Kev’s instincts had been correct. The cat was on the roof and wouldn’t come down.

This old joke had haunted him, taunting him with the image of a stubborn cat on the roof, since that first phone call in Orlando. It goes something like this: there were two brothers. One brother was going on an extended business trip, so he left his beloved cat in the care of the other brother while he was away. The traveling brother called to see how things were going and his brother said, “Your cat is dead.”

“No! Oh, no,” the traveling brother cried. Then he said, “That’s no way to deliver bad news.”

“I figured I’d use the Band-Aid method,” replied his brother. “Just tear it off, get it over quickly.”

“But I loved that cat! You knew I’d be away for a few weeks,” explained the traveling brother. “You should have started slowly to soften the blow. The first time I call, you should have told me that the cat is on the roof and won’t come down. The next time I call, you could say you finally got it down, but he must have caught a cold, but you’re going to take him to the vet. Then you could tell me, the vet gave him some medicine, and so on. You stretch it out like that for days. Build it up so it won’t be such a shock. And in the end, you break the bad news that he passed away.”

“Oh,” said his brother. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said the traveling brother. “How’s everyone else?”

“Well,” said his brother, “Mom is on the roof and she won’t come down.”

There was a knock at the door. It was Glenn. “The damage was much worse than you let on,” Kev said, pointing to the obvious destruction surrounding them.

“I lied,” he said, smiling. “Since there was nothing you could do about it, I didn’t want to ruin your vacation.”

Any anger or distrust Kev had had for the man drained like the water in the pea gravel. He was right. The Band-Aid rip of the blunt truth would have stressed them out. Glenn told them things were under control. And they were.

His instincts had been right. Glenn told them the cat was on the roof and it wouldn’t come down. Only, of course, there was no cat.

And no roof.