AlertMe moments at the weekend: Freezers and Cats!

Last week was my wife's birthday, so on Thursday we took the family up to London for a long weekend at my sister-in-law's house. On Friday I got a call from our cleaner, who'd arrived at our home that morning to find our freezer door ajar ... and most of the food inside spoiled.

"If only we already had AlertMe!" I thought - we'd have known about the problem and asked someone to come and close the door before any damage was done. This alone would have been worth the cost of a year's of AlertMe subscription, to say nothing of all the hassle.

This is a classic example of a device in the home knowing that there's a problem (our fridge-freezer beeps if either door is left open), but not having any way to tell its owner.

So we were house-sitting my sister-in-law’s house. They have a cat, and were reassured to know that we'd be around to check that it was getting in and out of the house OK, getting fed and watered. I wondered - could one of our AlertMe door/window sensors on the catflap give some peace of mind for cat users? In 2004, 4.5 million UK households owned 7.7 million cats.

Can't wait to get the system launched!