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.