My #@%$ Cat Destroyed My ARC REF 5SE. Soliciting Suggestions.

Hi. I am sorry for your loss but I am not a big ARC fan now for many years! Overpriced and Overhyped in my opinion! Have been a professional audio consultant in Colorado for many years! Once I discovered Atma- Sphere Amps located also in the state of Minnesota I have used them ever since! They use Triode tubes instead of what ARC uses. Don't have to pay for expensive tube matching either! I know the owner personally and the reviews in Absolute Sound not Stereophile are always consistent! I use the 60 watt monos and they blow away many other expensive amps! So maybe it's time for a change! Good look with the cat!😋

In whatjd's thread "what are the most used terms in high end" avsjerry offered "liquid". Your cat just desired that liquid sound. 😺. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Poor Kitty! You are a good cat dad, don't listen to the haters.
When my cat wants attention she walks up and threatens my speakers, she knows exactly what she is doing.
Hope you find a resolution. If the 7k includes all new tubes and a warranty I would do that.

@goldenear19;  What's with the Audio Research bashing? It's okay that you don't like Audio Research for your own personal reasons.  However, in my opinion, most things are over priced and over hyped.  So, include all the other items out there in your response.

Audio Research, like Atmosphere, and many others make excellent products and they keep people employed.

Audio Research quoted the OP a price for repairing the device.  They are one of the few companies out there (Martin Logan and Atmosphere comes to mind) that will still repair just about all of their previous products.  That is saying something.  A complete stuffed circuit board ain't cheap.  To take apart and test individual components and also a multi layer circuit board that may have fried internal traces is just to complicated and expensive, so they quoted replacing the entire board.  At least they still have that board around to replace.  That is also saying something.  If there are very small on-board circuits instead of through hole components, that also adds another costly level of diagnosis and repair.

Lets put aside the fact that we have a completely untrained cat that urinated on a very expensive piece, or a cat that was seriously trying to get the OP's attention (which the cat did), if by some other means a person fried the entire circuit board, it would still cost a pretty penny to either repair it or replace it.  I don't care who the manufacturer is in this case.  It's going to cost serious money to repair.

Get if fixed, or replace it, but definitely train that cat.

enjoy

Train the pussy dude!!