Greetings!

As promised I’m sharing with you, my ingenious technique for preventing those pesky felines (I mean, loving fur balls) from chewing your $80 macbook pro cords into oblivion! This is the first in my new series, That Darned Cat! where I try to solve the problems that cat ownership bestows upon us, the lucky many, who choose to let those evil beasts live in our homes.

This hack cost me about $5 and can be found at Lowe’s or Home Depot or any other big home improvement box store.

What you’ll need: scissors or an Exacto knife, and 1/4″ clear plastic tubing, a willing participant to do the work for you (Thanks I.F.!). The tubing comes in rolls of 12′ or greater. You won’t need the whole thing, but if you have a macbook, chances are you also have an iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc. Take care of those cords too and save the rest for when those cats smarten up and decide to chew through the plastic tubing. Although, I’ve completely dissuaded my cats from ever doing this – they just aren’t attracted to the thicker plastic tubing. They love those ridiculously expensive, uber-fragile mac cords. Curse you Apple. I once thought your high prices were for quality – I now know they’re only for arrogance and pretension.

Believe it or not the tubing isn’t in the electrical area of the store, its in the plumbing section! Don’t as me why, don’t ask me how. All I know is that I searched for months after reading a version of this hack on another blog and FINALLY I found a knowledgeable employee who could tell me where it was. God bless Janine at the Lowe’s Home Improvement in Ames, IA!

What you do is, you measure out the length of the cord you want to protect, and transfer that measurement to the cord. I did the super fancy skilled method of holding the tubing up to the cord and cutting the tubing where the cord ended. But you can use a measuring tape if you want. You know, show me up. Be skilled at things. SEE IF I CARE!

Once you have liberated a section of the tubing from the roll, you’ll take the exacto knife or your scissors and cut down one side of the tubing so that you could actually uncurl it and it would lay out flat into a 1″ x 3ft’ (or however long your cord is) piece of plastic – or silicon or whatever manmade disturbing concoction it happens to be. By the way, don’t uncurl it. You want it to keep its shape. Once you have cut down one side of the tubing, you may open the “wound” slightly to wrap the tubing around your power chord.

Voila! Instant kitty repellant in a non gaseous/chemical form – until you heat it up somehow, like letting it hang over a heating vent or something. I haven’t tried this, but there’s no reason the tubing should ever be warm or put you in any kind of danger. Unless you’re desperately protecting a cord that has been destroyed by kitties and has way too many exposed wires popping out every where. You’re just asking for an electrical fire that I, personally, and my life hack here, cannot help you with.

That’s all she wrote, folks!

Cheers.