As usual, it's a cat's fault

The night before last, I woke up in the middle of the night, and realized that I was shivering. The chill was radiating up from the waterbed mattress. (Technically, from a physics point of view, I believe it was the other way around, but that's not how it felt.) I stuck my hand under the mattress pad, and realized there was no warmth there. I figured that a cat had managed to knock the waterbed heater unplugged, and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I checked, and the heater's light was on, so that wasn't it. Last night, I realized I wasn't going to make it through the night as things stood, so I bundled up the comforter under me and slept sandwiched between its layers. This morning, I planned to investigate the purchase of a new waterbed heater, but I made one last check on the controls to make sure it wasn't just turned down too low. (I'm not even sure where one buys waterbed heaters these days; the one I have was purchased 25+ years ago, and the store is now HOM Furniture, though they still honor the lifetime waterbed conditioner offer from the store that used to be there.) I discovered that the control unit was set to the usual setting, but the connector between the actual heater portion (that goes under the waterbed mattress) and the control was dangling free.

I plugged it back in, and with luck, tonight will be much more comfortable for sleeping. I'm glad I won't have to figure out if I could replace the heater without draining the bed.

Cats! Why did it have to be cats?