Fixing What Rabbits Have Wrought

Some months back, one of my roommates gnawed on the cord to my Wacom tablet, rendering it inoperative. At that point I didn't realize that the power part of the cord (the chewed section) was separable from the part leading from the computer to the tablet, so I suspected the whole thing was kaput. Still, since I had paid $200 for the thing (even if that was ten or more years ago), I was reluctant to throw it out, just in case there was a chance of fixing it. Like with a wire-stripper and some electrical tape, something I can do but not do remarkably well.
Last week, the phone got chewed. I knew I could replace the phone cord itself, but what about the power cord for the answering machine part?
(We pause to respond to vehement scratching at bedroom door, demanding entrance. Enter Spotted Pair with great force, having been denied bedroom for at least twelve hours.)
I examined the pieces and discovered that we were dealing with a couple of AC adaptors with pretty identical-looking plugs. One, however, was 12volt, 6 watt, 200mA, and the other was 9 volt, 10 watt, 400mA. Evidently I had better take the pieces with me.
As it turned out, I needed to take the phone and the tablet with me well, so there were two trips total. Apparently the plugs on the appliance end come in a bewildering variety of sizes, sometimes with but a millimeter difference.
Radio Shack, however, does stock all the parts. You buy the correct AC adaptor and then you get the plug that fits your appliance separately but included in the price.
Complicated. I thought we were never going to figure out for certain which plugs these things took, because there seemed to be several candidates for each.
Eventually, however, we determined that both items took a size M plug.
I then took it all home and stuck it all together and Lo, my phone and tablet are functional again.
I'm always pleased when I can fix something mildly bizarre like this. But it would be nice if Orion (chewier than Ms. Spots, so the probable culprit) would stick to gnawing on junk mail and my dissertation drafts. And the outdated phone books that Kristen so kindly donated for his pleasure.