The microwave oven and

the Senior Cat have a love-hate affair. He has been using it for years. He uses it once a day to heat the milk for his breakfast (instant) coffee. (We are not real coffee drinkers.)
There are days when he gets it right and days when he gets it wrong. I think it has something to do with whether he is trying to read the paper at the same time. He needs to concentrate on one job at a time.
I remember the first microwave we got. (This is the second one.) My mother was interested. In her usual style she investigated rather than rushed out and bought one. She thought it "might be useful" and took the Senior Cat off to a class about how to use one. He was more interested in how they worked than the cooking side. I was elsewhere at the time but I heard about "shorter cooking times" and other things.
The microwave was duly bought. My mother experimented. It was not always successful. The recipe book which came with the oven promised all sorts of wonderful things. It should have been had up for false advertising. Some things simply didn't work. The texture of others changed in ways we didn't care for.  The pastry was always soggy.
An acquaintance of theirs swore by them. She had not one but two. She didn't use the conventional cook top or oven at all. 
      "Don't need them," she would say, "You can do anything and it tastes just the same."
It didn't. Her pastry was always soggy. 
My mother never quite gave up on the microwave. She would read the two recipe books she had bought that promised time saving microwave magic and try again...and again.
Eventually it reached the point where she couldn't cook. I took over. I eyed the microwave and said to myself, "I'll get you to work for me."
And it does. It heats most things very nicely. I even occasionally give it something to cook but I know it is a fussy little thing.
I never give it pastry.