This odyssey has kept my friends and me fascinated. A cat has been peeing in my garage at night for 2 weeks. I spent so long trying to figure out how the heck it was getting in 🧵
I installed 2 cameras, motion sensors, a speaker that would play the sound of dogs barking when motion was detected… I could always see it moving around, but I could never capture the moment it entered or left. I needed to see that to know what I needed to fix on the door.
šŸ”ˆ on:
There are a couple small gaps around the door, but even though cats can squeeze through surprisingly tight gaps, everyone simply couldn't believe it was doing that.
My best piece of evidence to go off of was a poor timelapse from one of the nights. Unfortunately the Ring cameras have been horrible at motion detection and they don't do continuous recording, so all I had was 30s-apart snapshots. It did look like it was coming in that way tho?

I thought perhaps the car was blocking the view. In multiple occasions I parked the car outside so the cameras had a clear view of the entire door. Whenever I parked the car outside, the car wouldn't enter the garage that night. Was it trolling me???

My friend joked that maybe the cat was pulling a Mission Impossible move and coming in the garage by hanging on to the bottom of the car. I laughed.
Then a few nights ago I was awake when I could see the cat in the garage cameras. While steaming it on my phone I walked down.

I entered and started yelling and banging things, expecting it would get scared and run away (and hopefully not want to come back). But to me surprise, it just disappeared under my car???
Looking at more footage I was now certain the cat wasn't entering or leaving.

The incredible thing is on *several* of the days when the cat was in the garage at night I drove during the day. Sometimes at freeway speeds. One day I parked it all day in SF. So if it did indeed enter by being somewhere under my car, then it was being driven along everywhere!

I looked with a flashlight under my car. It's a Tesla Model Y so the underside is mostly flat. I believe it may have found a comfortable spot somewhere around the front right wheel well / suspension area. But I haven't been able to see it and confirm exactly.

This was me banging the underside with a broom hoping it would come out. Here you can see my best guess as to where the cat may have been living.

@Javi on a different note, I hope you’re getting new tires soon 😶
@smileyborg yeeeaaaah… my lease expires in October, I was hoping I could ride these out until then 🄲🄲🄲 I very rarely drive in the rain, and never in snow or anything like that.
It’s insane that they have so little life in them after just 22k miles!!
@smileyborg Also, I just realized the softness of the image makes them look quite a bit worse than they really are

@Javi that trick won’t work, you’re going to get charged for new tires when you turn in the lease if they are under a certain tread depth (those certainly are!)

You can put on some cheap-o aftermarket replacement tires though.

@smileyborg yeah it’s my first time leasing (and driving a car that eats tires). I certainly expected that as a possibility, was just wondering if maybe it would fly given the rest of the car is in great condition.

The thing is, I thought it would be the same whether I get new tires now, or they charge me for them when I return them. What I didn’t consider is the possibility of returning it with crappier tires than what it came with!?

@Javi there’s a small chance they won’t charge you for new tires, but it’s unlikely. If they do, it will certainly be more expensive than some non-OEM ones you get yourself at America’s Tire. As long as all 4 tires match and have equivalent specs to the OEM ones, you should be fine!

@smileyborg thank you so much for this!! I’m gonna look into it.

I also need to understand what the return process will look like. I was under the impression (although now I don’t know where I got that from, maybe I made it up in my head lol) that there’s some kind of inspection prior to returning the car, and then I get to go fix any discrepancies on my own?

@Javi you can sometimes schedule a pre-return inspection yeah

@smileyborg thank you šŸ™ I’ll look into that!

Also I checked America’s Tire, and for some reason the tires they show me are Pilot Sport 4S, which are fancy ass (and expensive) tires šŸ˜‚

@Javi that’s the OEM tire, you need to find compatible replacements with the same size/rating
@smileyborg Mine came with Goodyears, but yeah I think I just found the option on the website to show me all compatible tires šŸ‘
@Javi BTW you can also buy used tires, if you are OK driving with those sketchy things šŸ˜†
@smileyborg I’m gonna try to time it so I don’t have a lot of driving left to do in this car after I replace the tires and before I return it šŸ˜