PennNet-21 Cat Stories by Kristina .. Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 20:53:18 -0400 From: kmv To: Dikran Kassabian, Mike Berry, NESS Subject: Re: P21 Story rev-P It’s Monday morning at 10 A.M. Pandora, a 12 pound black and white feline, awakes, stretches, and looks dolefully out the window. The humans have gone to wherever it is they go. She slowly strolls to the kitchen to see if any food has been left out. Drat. She hoists her obese form up onto the kitchen table looking for a cereal bowl that might have milk in it, and in doing so she steps on the keyboard of a laptop computer. The screen springs to life. She stares at it intently and the face recognition software gives her access. She begins pressing keys, and despite her inability to separate her “fingers” she is quickly able to connect to petopia.com and check on the order for 50 pounds of Eukanuba all-natural cat food she ordered two days ago by swiping her human's smart credit card on the reader attached to the PC. It is due to be delivered that day. Just then she notices the green light on the video camera attached to the PC and realizes the motion detector has activated and she is being monitored from her human's current location, so she pretends to be randomly pouncing on the keys, then surreptitiously places the picture of herself in a sleeping pose in front of the camera and activates the purr tape. She chuckles to herself. Realizing that without an opposable thumb she has little chance of getting the laptop out the door, she looks around and finds a tiny lavender colored wireless PDA which she is able to easily carry it through the cat door in her mouth. She takes it to the front porch to await the cat food delivery. When it arrives, she broadcasts an email message the other cats in the neighborhood and they all converge on the porch, claw the bag open and gorge. She then brings up her GPS on the PDA so as not to get lost, takes a walk around the neighborhood, and spends an hour or two lying in wait under a birds’s nest full of tiny baby birds, while using the built-in MP3 to play the sound of a mother bird, hoping to lure the birdies out of the nest. Her beeper goes off at 3:00. When the humans arrive home at 3:30 they find Pandora rousing herself from apparent slumber. She meows hungrily, using her most innocent look, unaware that her location and vital functions have been tracked all day from a management console in the PennNet Operations Center, thanks to the tiny chip embedded under her fur. There will be no Fancy Feast tonight. ------- Message 2 Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 13:17:10 -0400 From: Deke Kassabian To: pn21-all Subject: Re: p21 stories (fwd) This is priceless. I'm forwarding this without Kristina's permission. ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Date: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 1:09 PM -0400 From: "Kristina M. Victoreen" To: Deke Kassabian Subject: Re: p21 stories My last cat story idea didn't make it into the final document, so here's this year's version. Fluffy, a tiger striped cat, was in the kitchen licking his front paws when the power went out. He didn't notice. Perhaps, a flicker of concern crossed his neural circuits as his tiny brain registered the absence of the familiar hum of the refrigerator, the source of the tuna dinner he would receive soon, but it was quickly replaced by a sudden desire to rub his left ear. By the time he had finished, the power was back on and it was time to go to the front door to anticipate the arrival of Elizabeth, his human companion. As he walked past the hall closet he noticed the flickering lights on the network equipment, which indicated a reboot. Having never quite internalized the concept that light was energy and therefore not actually alive, his predatory instincts took over and he pounced on the flashing lights, paws flailing, in a wild attempt to subdue the energetic prey. Within 3 minutes the annoying lights were out, as he had pulled out the electrical cord on the wireless access point, pressed the power switch on the file server, and reconfigured the network wiring in an interesting but chaotic way. Proud of his success, Fluffy reached the front door just as Elizabeth entered the apartment. After feeding Fluffy, Elizabeth attempted to turn on the cat?s favorite show, ?Emergency Vets? on Animal Planet, and noticed the flashing ?12:00?, indicating that the home network was down. After five hours spent recovering her unsaved thesis from the file server, and reconfiguring all the needlessly complex appliances in her house, she briefly considered a UPS, but decided instead, to take Fluffy to the SPCA. She had realized too late that even the most sophisticated technology can be subject to a cat-astrophic failure.