By: Annna [2002-07-29]

Cat Wars

1998/03/06

Well, my buddy Don "Obvious Pseudonym" McClure is a fine chap, Man-Mountain McClure, we call him. He has cats and dogs at his house; two yappy dogs that follow him everywhere because he's the only one who feeds them. He can't go more than ten feet without stumbling over the dogs. "Agh! Damn yappy dogs!" And he has two cats, originally everyone's cats but now his. One of them is named Bob, and is somewhat brain damaged. Bob loves you. Bob wants to climb on your head and drool, failing that, to drool all over you. Bob's a sweetie. As Don says; "I could never do anything to hurt Bob."

Anyway, Don's sister got a new cat. Don's a nice guy and did his best to make the cat feel at home, but whenever he got close to it, it scratched. "Okay," he thought, not being stupid, "I'll just leave it alone." The cat then started walking up to him and purring. As soon as Don took the bait and reached down to pet it, SLASH! Cat attack! After that, whenever he came in a room, the cat looked up at him and slowly walked closer.... It ended up with a 6' guy being slowly chased around the house by a cat. He lived in FEAR of this cat. You could see it in his eyes at school. He told everyone about his problem, and most of them laughed. I advised him to stare the cat down, so it would know who was boss.

He emailed me the next day, saying that it worked at first, then the cat LUNGED at him. He sounded scared and confused. This cat was obviously evil. So I brought my Pet Trainer (TM) to school to lend to the poor guy. It's one of those little things that emits a piercing ultrasonic noise that really annoys cats and dogs. I'd gotten it a while back to chase off the male cats singing under my window all night, and it had since been unused. I hear if you want to spend 20 dollars more, you can get a model that makes a REWARD tone that cats LIKE to hear. That just sounds scary. Anyway:

> Subject: Cat frightening box
> Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 12:46:57 -0800
> From: Donnie Boy
> Organization: Monkeyland Task Force
> To: truwe@XXXX.net
>
> Man, Anna, you were right. I came home, and there was my sister's
> cat.. giving me it's smug look, as usual. So, I activated the
> cat-terrifier, and the cat lept back about 4 feat and gave me this
> wide-eyed look. I pushed the button again and the cat took off.
> Ever since then, the cat's been really nice to me. I kinda wanted to
> use the cat-terrifier on it and yell out some snappy remarks about the
> house of pain and what not, but I can't irritate the cat now that it's
> being good. (Well, I could, but I'd feel mean then.)
> This little box is a miracle device. If I ever get me a cat of my own
> with some behavior problems, I'm gettin' me one of these.
>
> don
> --
> Please don't send me spam, unless it's actually edible.

So, I think I helped Take Back the Night or something. Although the cat is probably now plotting to kill Don in his sleep. Luckily, I have another one of these devices and some leather gloves, so I can always go to his house and be the Other With the Whip.

beeeeeep! WHAT IS THE LAW? SAY IT, CAT!

This is gonna be fun.

Cat Cannon [2002-07-29 04:54:58] Jacques Kitsch

Several years ago, the aviation industry developed a chicken cannon to fire chickens at airplane windows to test their strength; so, a cat cannon seems only natural. Supposedly, due to evolution, a lot of animals have a reptilian brain, and cats reptilian side is strong because they don't have a lot of upper brain functions. I liked the electronic weapon references. Also, as this piece is several years old, the cat in question undoubtedly has a different nature. You can't cross the same river twice.That Darned Cat
Ask Haans-Heurmann

[2002-07-29 06:52:13]

The thing with cat cannon's is whilst frozen chickens are available in every good bookshop, frozen cats are like rocking horse droppings. This means the uptake of cat cannons in the aviation industry has been significantly slowed due to these facts.

[2002-07-29 08:55:34] dunc

Also it's largely irrelevant because aeroplanes don't habitually fly through flocks of cats at the end of runways, geese and seagulls being more usual.

hungover [2002-07-29 09:31:45] dunc

Back from stag weekend, where incidentally I met a mad cat. It was a giant orange kitten, of the sort that thinks the whole world is his friend. On having his ears scratched he purred so much he fell over. I then gave him bits of grass to fight but he went a bit mental and ran up my leg and hung there upside down trying to bite it off at the knee, provoking much hilarity from my compatriots.

Catnip [2002-07-29 11:17:53] Jacques Kitsch

Fresh catnip almost always staightens out a malcreant cat.

Chickens [2002-07-29 11:20:50] Jacques Kitsch

One seldom sees flocks of frozen chickens flapping about, their being notoriously unaerodynamic.

[2002-07-30 01:38:50] alptraum

this is where someone usually mentions the U.S. military's failed program to get bats to deliver incendiary bombs. strange how i've been through this conversation more than once

bats [2002-07-30 02:29:06] dunc

By a phenomonal effort of will, Jacques manages to keep his fingers off the keyboard.

[2002-07-30 02:30:58]

From what I heard the mistake was freezing the bats first. Frozen bats + Incendiary != good idea. Now there are loads of frozen bats in low earth atmosphere so every aeroplane has to be tested by firing frozen chickens at it.

Bat Cannons [2002-07-30 02:48:19] Jacques Kitsch

And the chickens are tested by firing frozen bats into them.

[2002-08-02 20:27:48] TheTreefrog

This is somewhat off topic but this guy didn't happen to have moved from Nebraska, did he? I was in 7th and 8th grade with someone by that name.

Cat Cannon [2003-02-24 10:45:00] Eiben Scrood

Used to have a boss by the name of Cat Cannon. Hate dat beeyotch too.

Cat Cannon [2003-10-31 05:10:00] Dave Brundle

I work in the Aerospace industry and one of my old university mates is involved in testing cockpits using chickens launched from an air gun. Naturally when you hit large inanimate lumps of metal with chicken carcasses you tend to get chicken splattered everywhere and no matter how hard you try you can't totally clean it up. As a result it attracts rats, which started to become a major problem. So being the aerospace industry they tried various high tech solutions, none of which worked, and so grudgingly they decided that a cat might do the trick.

One day they had the rig set up to do a test and then the buzzer went for lunch. Standard reaction, they downed tools and trooped off to the canteen. When they came back, they did the usual safety checks, cleared the area, did the count down and hit the button.

Instead of the usual whoosh, thump noise there was a much louder bang and fur flying everywhere. My mate and his workmate looked at each other and simultaneously said "Where's the cat?".

Near as can be figured the cat had smelt the chicken nestling in its sabot in the gun and had found its way up the barrel. It was only because they downed tools for lunch that the usual cover over the barrel wasn't in place.

PS Names have deliberately been withheld to protect the guilty.

My brother has an interesting story about pigs, oil pipelines and animal rights protestors if you're interested.

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