Another cat story

[jeaniesa]

Sorry to bore those of you who don't like cats, but my cat is cracking me up at this very moment. I have a bit 21" montior and my cat is NOT on top of my onitor - no, she's sitting n FRONT of the monitor and attacking the mouse cursor and the text as it moves across the screen as I type. Sorry for any typos - but I can't see my screen!

Jeanie

[d_kendal]

I've always wondered what makes cats so attracted to monitors. I don't have any animals, but when I've been at friends houses who do have cats they are frequently lying on top of the monitor, rubbing against it or attacking some other part of the computer.

- David

[jeaniesa]

My theory is that they like the warmth of the monitor (when they're lying on top of it - which strangely enough my cats never do that.) Otherwise, I think the cats know that the computer is competing with them for attention. My cats also love to attack my graphics tablet pen - they see it in my hand and think the pen is getting pets instead of them. You should see some of my selections!

Jeanie

[DJ Dubovsky]

I have been told that animals can't see the monitor or tvs for that matter because their eyes can't see the revolutions as a solid picture as we do. But I remember my cats chasing birds on the tv screen and they used to sit and watch tv quite often. Even invited a bunch of alley cats in to watch with them one time when I was sleeping on the couch. That was a big surprise. Thought I was having a cat nightmare. I woke up and said "what the heck" Next thing you know I have 7 strange cats running helter skelter and mine hissing as though they had nothing to do with it. They were all sitting in front of the TV as though spending a night at the movies. The only thing missing was the popcorn. (I had a cat door at the time) I don't even recall what they were watching.

I can't say what it is beyond the warmth monitors generate or the movement on the screen but I believe they do see the screen for sure just as we do and it fascinates them.

Too bad you couldn't have had that on film. You could have won some money on Funniest Home Videos or something.
DJ

[d_kendal]

I think the cats know that the computer is competing with them for attention. My cats also love to attack my graphics tablet pen - they see it in my hand and think the pen is getting pets instead of them. You should see some of my selections!

lol yep cats can get pretty irritated if you give anything else attention. all the cats I've ever known are very weird animals. example: one of my uncles 3 cats seems to think it's a dog. he acts nothing like your average cat and even runs to the door and growls when the pizza delivery man comes.

DJ - thats hilarious! must've been quite a shock to wake up to find a bunch of strange cats watching your TV!!!
- David

[BigAl]

Jeanie, my cats also love to wander around the PCs. My most memorable (??) experience was having one of them delete a rather important file in front of my eyes. I happened to be in Win31's file manager at the time when kitty came marching across the keyboard. The front foot hit the Del key (Do you wish to delete this file? Y/N) and back foot came thru and hit the Enter key before I could swat her!

DJ, that really would have been something to capture the neighbourhood cats watching TV on video!! (funny, you don't strike me as one who'd sleep in front of the TV )

[Ed_L]

I always like to see the posts about animals. They never fail to give me a laugh. Deb, I don't know what the cats were watching, but I'll bet it wasn't Lassie!

Ed

[jeaniesa]

DJ - way too funny!

Our cats don't need to see the birds on the TV to go crazy. My husband has a "birding by ear" CD and when he puts that on, the cats go wild - staring at the speaker and then running to a window. They can't seem to decide where the birds are.

And I say that cats can definitely see what's on the monitor. I remember a few months ago bringing up a tutorial on extracting a cat and the cat being used looked very similar to my cats. Anyway, one of them saw the picture on the screen and promptly looked behind the monitor expecting to see a cat. Then looked back at the screen like, "I did just see that, didn't I?" Kind of like one of those movies where someone walks through a doorway and becomes invisible on the other side...

David - growling at the pizza delivery man? Yes - definitely a dog in a cat costume I think!

Thanks for the warning about the keyboard BigAl. So far I haven't had much more than the Start Menu pop up, but it could definitely be worse than that someday!

Jeanie

[DJ Dubovsky]

Oops, I let my guard down and now you all know I'm a couch potato at heart. Yes, it was a surprise waking up to that many cats. I thought my vision was going bad at first. I eventually had to lock up the kitty door because I was getting more visitors than random cats. Bufo toads figured out there was a feast inside the kitty door and would come in and sit in their dish. Well one would since he took up the entire dish. They're about half the size of the cats, about 5 lbs of flesh and warts. After that I decided it wasn't that much trouble letting them out periodically.

BigAl
Ouch, hope that didn't set you back too bad. What are the odds of hitting both keys correctly?

David,
Are you sure they were house cats? Sounds like a minature tiger.
DJ

[OhThatGirl2001]

After reading this, I thought I would post my cat story! My kitty is an outdoor kitty. We've had a cat door for as long as we've lived in this house (11 years). However, in the past 2 years a stray (very smelly) cat seems to be coming in and stinking up our house and making our cat neurotic. We tried chasing it away, setting a trap - but this was a smart kitty. So, we invested in an electric - not magnetic cat door. I had to order this from the States as Staywell does not sell them in Canada. So, along with the duty and exchange (our Canadian dollar is similar to the Peso).... it ended costing over $100.00. First thing we discovered, it was a little (barely) smaller than the cutout we already had. Smaller was not good! Well, we fashioned a piece of plywood and remounted the door. It was a so so fix... but the real problem was yet to come. Oh, did I say this was going to be a short story?? The electric key my kitty wore would only work when her face was flush against the window. Now how lame is that I ask you? We tried all kinds of things to fix this. Realizing the door had a metal outer frame, it seem to interfere with the electronics. Can you believe that? So, the long and short of this... is that we had to buy a wooden door. Now, are you putting the $$$ together... quite a hefty investment! The door seems to have done the trick... but NO!!! the stray has learned to piggy back my cat and come in just after she has entered. My cat is so afraid of this cat, she runs in a corner while the other kitty steals her food. I once put the latch on the door to trap the cat from going out once it was inside... can you say "mistake". I entered the laundry room to find the cat had riped it apart, stunk it out and it jumped at my face. I opened the door to outside and ran for my life! To this very day the stray lurkes in the shadows...

P.S. My cat's name is Shadow!

Lisa

[OhThatGirl2001]

P.S.

Are you asking yourself now... how is this related to photo restoration? Ahhhh

[BigAl]

Lisa, I can relate to your cat terrorist. I had one of those food thieves once as well. One night, when I'd had enough, I chased him upstairs and downstairs, and finally cornered him in my study and when I tried to grab him, he bit me. This was rather gruesome, as he was a white cat, and the last I saw of him was bolting down the stairs with my blood dripping from his mouth (I still have the scar on my knuckle).

And all the while, my very brave German Shepherd cowered in her room She is very good at chasing strays when she's outside though

Are you asking yourself now... how is this related to photo restoration?

Doug did say "where non retouching talk is encouraged"

[BigAl]

Someone sent this URL to me this morning. Quite topical .

[OhThatGirl2001]

Hi BigAl,

I tried the URL but it did not work.

[Ed_L]

The site might have been down for a while. It worked fine for me. Catproof???? Now I've seen it all!

Ed