"Houston, we have a problem."

This goofy little tale only has two things going for it. One is that it’s true. The other is that it involves one of those misadventures which may leave you feeling smug and self-satisfied as you mumble to yourself, "well, better him than me." When my wife Liz and I set out on a walk through the neighborhood yesterday morning, I quickly realized that several things were amiss:

• my keys were in the locked house;
• Liz’s keys were in the locked house;
• there were no humans in the locked house;
• the wire cutters that I could have used to cut through a screen window were in the locked house;
• we haven’t trained our dogs, who were in the locked house, to fetch keys;
• even if we had, the dogs wouldn’t be able to unlock the front door to give us the keys;
• there was no point asking the cats for help because, being cats, they couldn't be bothered.

After pointlessly patting down my pockets over and over again, as if that would miraculously produce the missing keys, I spotted one of our neighbors working in his yard. He pulled a set of wire cutters from his toolbox, and I was good to go. Within a matter of minutes I had propped a ladder (fortunately not stored in the locked house) against the bathroom window and sliced the screen. I reached in and pulled the latches on the screen, so I could raise the window to get it out of the way. The interior window happened to be unlocked, so I was then able to raise it and prop it open without having to break the glass.

Liz, being smaller and more flexible than yours truly, quickly pulled herself through the now-open window with remarkable grace, speed and ease, making me wonder if she should be listing cat burgling on her resume. Once she tumbled into the bathroom, she said later, chocolate lab Aquinnah and pit bull/lab mix Martha were staring at her with what passes for open-mouthed amazement in the dog world. They were so baffled, in fact, that they forgot to bark. The cats, in a predictable display of indifference, had secreted themselves into various hideaways elsewhere in the house.