I’m standing in the kitchen looking at Pandora’s phone, and something about it doesn’t make sense. The phone is plugged into the outlet near the counter, the charging symbol is visible on the screen, and the battery is at three percent. Ordinarily, none of this would concern me. Three percent is a perfectly legitimate battery percentage. Every phone passes through three percent at some point unless its owner has the discipline to charge it before things become desperate, which Pandora does not. The problem is that approximately forty-five minutes ago, while we were sitting in the living room, Pandora announced that her battery was almost dead and said, “I’m going to charge my phone.” I watched her pick it up. I watched her walk toward the charger beside the couch. I remember this specifically because Mr Whiskers had been lying across the charging cable, and Pandora had to move him before she could reach it. There was a sequence of events. Phone. Charger. Cat relocation. Charging. Yet the phone is now in the kitchen at three percent.
Pandora has gone out to run errands, so I cannot immediately resolve the discrepancy with a simple question. This leaves me with observation, reconstruction, and John. John is sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and looking at something on his laptop, which means he is physically present but has not necessarily agreed to participate. “Do you know why Pandora’s phone is at three percent?” I ask. John looks at the phone, then at me. “Because the battery is almost dead?” I explain that this describes the condition without explaining the cause. Pandora said she was going to charge it forty-five minutes ago. The phone is now in a different room with almost no charge. Something happened between those two points. John takes another drink of coffee. “Maybe she moved it.” I tell him I had already considered that. “Then I’m glad we’re making progress,” he says, and returns to his laptop.
Mr Whiskers enters the kitchen and sits near the counter. Under normal circumstances I might consider his arrival coincidental, but yesterday he successfully identified a dish towel hanging dangerously close to the stove while I spent several minutes trying to determine why he was behaving strangely. This has forced me to reconsider the evidentiary value of certain feline behaviors. I am not saying Mr Whiskers is now a reliable witness. One correct observation does not establish general reliability, particularly when the witness has an extensive history of breakfast fraud. Still, dismissing him entirely would now be methodologically irresponsible. He looks at Pandora’s phone. I look at him. He looks at me. “Do you know something about this?” I ask. John looks over the top of his laptop. “You realize yesterday has made you worse, right?” I tell him yesterday established that ignoring unusual behavior can have consequences. “Yesterday established that the cat has better fire-safety instincts than you.” I choose not to respond because that interpretation remains unnecessarily hostile.
I examine the phone without touching it. The charging cable is connected. The plug is firmly seated in the outlet. The screen shows the lightning-bolt symbol. Everything indicates active charging, but the battery remains at three percent. I wait. After a minute, it changes to four. This confirms that the phone is currently charging, but it does nothing to explain why it was not charged earlier. I go into the living room and inspect the charger beside the couch. The cable is there. The adapter is plugged into the wall. Mr Whiskers follows me, which I note but do not interpret. I pick up the cable and discover that nothing is attached to it. Again, expected. The phone is in the kitchen. I am about to return when I notice something else: the charger is plugged into the lower outlet, and the small indicator on the power strip beside the couch is dark.
This introduces a second problem.
I press the switch on the power strip. The indicator comes on. I press it again. It goes off. I stare at it for several seconds. Pandora could have plugged her phone into the charger exactly as she said she would and still received no charge if the power strip was off. This is a plausible explanation, but it creates an obvious question: why was the power strip off? I look down at Mr Whiskers. He is sitting approximately six inches from it. “No,” I tell him. He blinks. I am aware of the danger of assigning causation based solely on proximity. I learned this from the rotten potato. Still, Mr Whiskers regularly walks behind the couch, and the switch is large enough that a paw could conceivably press it. I crouch beside the strip to inspect it. John calls from the kitchen, “Are you investigating an electrical outlet now?” I tell him I am establishing whether the original charging location was operational. “That sounds like yes.” I ignore him.
At work later that morning, I mention the situation to Karen because she has previously demonstrated an ability to identify obvious explanations that other people overlook, although she describes this ability as “being a normal person.” I explain that Pandora said she would charge her phone, the phone later appeared in the kitchen at three percent, and the original charger was connected to a power strip that had been switched off. Karen listens carefully and asks the first useful question anyone has asked all morning. “Did Pandora ever say the phone actually charged?” I tell her no. She said she was going to charge it. “Then she probably plugged it in, realized later it wasn’t charging, and moved it to the kitchen.” This is irritatingly plausible. Dave, who has been listening from the next desk, asks why I didn’t simply ask Pandora. I explain that Pandora was out running errands when I discovered the discrepancy. Dave nods. “So you investigated a charger because your girlfriend wasn’t home for an hour.” I tell him that phrasing deliberately removes the relevant context. Karen asks what the relevant context is. “The phone was at three percent.” Neither of them seems to find this persuasive.
When I get home, Pandora is in the kitchen unpacking groceries. Her phone is on the counter at eighty-two percent. I decide to approach the matter directly, which represents continued personal growth. “Can I ask you something about your phone?” She stops unpacking and looks at me. “How long have you been thinking about my phone?” I tell her that is not relevant to the question. She closes her eyes briefly. I explain what I observed: she said she was going to charge it in the living room, later it was in the kitchen at three percent, and the power strip beside the couch was off. Pandora stares at me for a moment and then says, “Yes.” I wait for additional information. None arrives. “Yes what?” I ask. “Yes, that’s what happened.” I tell her that only confirms the sequence. She sighs and explains that she plugged the phone in beside the couch, came back about half an hour later, discovered it had not charged because the power strip was off, took the phone into the kitchen, plugged it into the wall, and left to run errands while it charged. She had taken her older backup phone with her because she needed her shopping list and didn’t want to wait.
This explanation accounts for almost everything, which bothers me because of the word almost. “Why was the power strip off?” I ask. Pandora shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe somebody bumped it.” We both look toward the living room. Mr Whiskers is asleep on the couch. John walks in from the hallway at exactly the wrong moment, sees both of us looking at the cat, and asks what happened. Pandora tells him the power strip was switched off. John says, “Oh, that was me.” I turn toward him. Apparently he had plugged in the vacuum the previous evening, switched off the power strip before unplugging it because he thought that was better for the electronics, and forgot to switch it back on. I ask why he didn’t mention this earlier when I specifically questioned him about Pandora’s phone. John reminds me that I asked why the phone was at three percent, not whether he had recently operated the living-room power strip. “Those are clearly related questions,” I tell him. “They are now,” he says.
The matter should end there. Pandora plugged in her phone. John had previously switched off the power strip. Pandora discovered the problem, moved the phone to a working outlet, and went about her day. Nobody lied. Nobody hid anything. Nobody communicated behind my back. Karen was not involved. Dave was not involved. Mrs Jenkins was not involved. I did not inspect Pandora’s messages, touch her phone, follow her anywhere, install surveillance equipment, or involve the neighbor. By any reasonable measure, this represents significant improvement. Pandora even tells me so, although I suspect there may have been sarcasm involved when she said, “I’m very proud of you for not launching an investigation into my battery percentage.”
That evening, I’m sitting on the couch when Mr Whiskers jumps onto the armrest and squeezes behind me. A few seconds later, the television goes dark. I look at the screen. Then I look down at the power strip. The indicator light is off. Mr Whiskers emerges from behind the couch, steps onto the cushion, and settles beside me as though nothing has happened. I reach down and switch the strip back on. The television returns. Mr Whiskers closes his eyes. I consider calling John into the room as an independent witness, but decide against it. We already know John switched the strip off yesterday. We also know Mr Whiskers was nowhere near it when that happened. Tonight is a completely separate incident, and it would be irresponsible to connect the two without additional evidence.
Still, I moved the power strip behind the end table.
That is not an accusation.
It is a methodological improvement.