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


(Public service announcement-keep your pets away from your audio equipment)

I love my cat. But not as much as I once did :-)
The short story is cat pee corroded the main board to my ARC REF 5SE. 

Homeowners insurance doesn't cover repair or replacement because owning a pet means you assume liability/responsibility. Ironically, or strangely enough, If my neighbor's cat or dog did this, I could collect.

My options-
Repair it. Fixing it will cost 7K. The main board alone is 6K.
Buy a pre-owned replacement at close to similar price. And if I go pre-owned, what's the market on a REF 5SE with a destroyed main board.
Go in a different direction.

What would you do?

TIA,
David
128x128wharfy
wharfy - try to make lemonade.  i have two cats i love - one of them, in jumping onto my Audio Note AN-E Lexus Signatures, shredded the woofer with his rear claws.  i ordered upgraded hemp woofers, and invited my nephew, who’s pretty handy with a soldering iron, to help with the surgery.  they sound even better than original!  ironically, what i came up with to prevent a recurrence was to put cat toys lying around on top of each speaker - the cats are very smart, of course, and recognize they no longer have a flat surface to land on!  Good luck.
Not sure this would work for your situation. I had a fried circuit board in my central AC unit a several years ago and sent the board to
Industrial Repair Service- 800-950-2349. They repair/ rebuild circuit boards. That circuit board was smallish and I remember the cost being just under $200.00. My AC worked fine with the new board.
Wharfy, really sorry to hear about the damage. 
I have a cat also—and guess I should take solace in that my electronics are all sealed.  I don’t like ventilation slots/holes. They are always an invitation for damage. Hope you can find an affordable way to get your music back in gear. 
As for all the cat haters on here—my cat is highly trainable and understands what we want and need. None of that is gonna help if s/he is terribly startled, which sounds like the case here.

BTW, if you weren’t home, how do you know what caused the cat’s behavior?
     Don't put down your cat. It probably does have a health problem, more than likely a urinary tract infection. The cat haters here probably haven't actually owned cats. They are often more dog like with their owners.  If you get a dog, you've gotta walk em and scoop poop. I had forgotten how much maintenance dogs are until we kept a lost one for a week before finding its owners. His barking set our alarm off twice while we were out, resulting in $125.00 in fines for false alarms.  I liked the dog but didn't miss him when he was gone.  I've owned 7 cats over the last 25 years , and only had one that went outside the box. She was 19 years old and terminally ill,and collapsed and passed and later that day. It probably killed her to know she went outside the box. I Never had trouble with cats destroying audio equipment; all have showed no interest in my turntable either.That being said, if you did have that amp repaired, any cat pee that is missed in cleaning will likely smell pretty bad when heated up. I wouldn't trust that the repaired amp would come back totally free of urine. Better to replace it in my opinion, unless they can guarantee they can get it all.