Have I just created a punster?

My wife and I "inherited" this cat when we moved in to our new residence more than a year ago. Cynthia's daughter and her family who used to live in this house "bequeathed" their pet to us because they said that it was good at getting rid of pests. So for the past year or so we just called it with the generic name of "pusa" (the Tagalog word for cat). Until lately, that is. Our new household help, Rosamie, one morning approached us while my wife and I were having breakfast. She announced that she had given our pet a name. "CATcher," Rosamie said, "because it was good at catching mice and lizards and snakes".

CATcher, I thought to myself, what an appropriate and punny name! I smiled at my wife and looked at her with wide eyes because honestly I never expected a house help to come up with such an ingenuous name. Had our house help been reading my pun posts in Facebook? Have I just created a punster?

House everything?

It has been almost a year since we moved into our present abode (please see my previous blog). I had some misgivings then on why were we changing our residence from a cozy two-bedroom apartment into a humongous five-bedroom house when there's just me and my wife. Everything happens for a reason, I mused, even I couldn't figure out why at that moment. Recent events seem to emphasize  even more my apprehensions on the whys and wherefores of such a move. For one thing we can't get a househelp. We had two cases where a prospective maid backed out at the last minute. The second one even scammed us of two thousand pesos - asking us to send her the money for her transportation expenses inasmuch as she will be coming from Samar province. On the date of her departure she told us that they met an accident and that her mom was in "critical condition". We never got a reply when we called her several times to ask her to return the money we sent her. Now why is having a maid important? Because we need someone to house sit for us whenever we go out of town for a few days (since we are birders, that is a given).

Then when the rainy season started we noticed that some parts of the house got flooded - not a lot - but enough to be an annoyance. Last week there were several leaks including that of the main pipe. It took four days and two different plumbers to solve the problem.

Are these somehow not-so-subtle messages that we need to look for another place that is more appropriate for two senior citizens? Did I mention that we are dab-smack in the middle of the western fault? Warnings of an impending 7+ magnitude earthquake are currently flooding the news and social media. There was even an earthquake drill yesterday in the whole of MetroManila.

How's everything here? Not looking good I must admit.