We came back last night from a trip to find our Comcast cable TV and
Internet both not working. I called Comcast tech support, which
confirmed that no signals were getting through to our TV and PC. The
Comcast repairman showed up this morning while I was at work and told my
wife that a rat had chewed through the cable. After replacing the
cable, the TV worked fine but the PC was still not connecting to the
Internet. After about an hour of fiddling with the PC, he told my wife
that the Comcast service is working fine but that there must be a virus
in the PC that is blocking the service and that we needed to have a
computer virus specialist inspect the PC. When I got home, I decided to
look over the PC situation and found that the cable modem was turned
off. After pressing the on/off switch, it worked fine. Could he have
been that dumb?

Now I am wondering about the cable being chewed by a rat. We do live in
a semi-rural environment. But I've never seen a rat on our property.
What do I need to do to protect the cable from further damage from rats?
Thanks for any advice.