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Watching The Cat

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I don’t think you are allowed to have a blog today if you won’t at least consider using the occasional viral video that millions of people can’t stop watching or talking about, such as this one featuring Tara, the Amazing, Avenging Family Cat of Bakersfield, California.

I’m a dog person and always will be, but even I’m impressed with this cat, who was 100% in the right and wound up playing the hero we would all like to be, but mostly aren’t.

For those who scan the daily headlines for a clear and just moral cause to motivate some radical action, that dog represented this cat’s WWII moment. She was the Greatest Generation and there was only one Right Thing To Do.

She will throw out the first pitch at a minor league baseball game on May 20th. Not really, of course, but she will get a rousing ovation, I’m sure.

The other fascinating aspect of all this is what appears to be a sophisticated, fixed camera, surveillance system around the house that records what it sees – thus the multiple angle shots of the event as it unfolds.

Is having such a system a necessary feature of the dark future that awaits all of us?

I’m not talking about using cameras to prevent crime. I’m talking about the urgent necessity of using cameras to capture a viral video that will catapult your family to temporary global stardom and validate your family pet for her quiet heroism.

And not just around your home – in your car, your workplace, and on your hat. (Look for Hat Cams to become popular very soon. It’s time!) Some children are already very closely watched. We are probably not far from marking the first normal-length human lifetime to be captured on video from start to finish.

But that can’t happen unless cameras are always rolling, and the latest models are cute as all get out!

What unrecorded event from your life would you like to have on video?

41 thoughts on “Watching The Cat”

  1. Excellent observations, Dale!

    I can’t think of any moment of my life I would like immortalized. I’m good with my meat memories (the one’s stored in my brain). Maybe something from the first few years of my life, when I was briefly an only child.

    Years ago, I saw a video made from an early home movie that showed a town celebration in my mother’s hometown, and there she is at the front of the band, twirling her baton. Wish I had a copy of that.

    Also wish there was a movie (or even candid shots) from the weddings of my grandparents. Easy to believe they posed for the formal portraits I have, harder to imagine the dancing I am told happened.

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  2. Good morning. I think there was a thanksgiving gathering at our house where my parents, my mother-in-law, my Uncle Horace, and both of my daughters plus their families were present. That’s the unrecorded event I would like to have on video. It would include the inappropriate statement from my mother-in-law following the blessing of the meal by my Uncle.

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      1. You are right, Dale. I have the movie of the scene with that statement from my mother-in-law very firmly fixed in my mind.

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  3. I think it would be a kick to oh back through your life and get to do the rewind on memories from long ago
    Linx of like Harry potter looking into it he mirror where his parents lived . I would enjoy seeing those card games with ray dewberry sitting out back listening to the twins in the radio , my rides around the neighborhood on my tractor my travel years my kids at age 1,2,3,10,15, my old babysitters, teachers, school chums, those bike rides and hikes through the woods and mountain streams but if it were from the video hat it would always be looking away. It would be the view I saw, id kinda like one that followed me around and gave me a view like the one watching the car instead if one from the cats perspective

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    2. tim, maybe your hat cam could have two lenses – one looking out at the world and one tucked under the bill and pointed slightly back, so we could watch your expression as you see what you saw.

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      1. There we have my next product , a video drone to hover silently recording your life to be edited later to pass onto your grandchildren while stored in the cloud until needed
        1000 per 1/4

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  4. I continue to be camera shy and can’t think of a single instance in which I would like to be featured on film- of any kind.

    I’m having a super boring garage sale today. It came about unexpectedly, as my friends mushroom hunt and Bacchanalian bonfire fell through.

    I will be at the gathering for Steve tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you there.

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  5. Our orange cat went missing for 24 hours yesterday, slinking back at 1:50am this morning. I wish i had a cam to see what the heck he had been up to. His demeanor was that if someone who had got into more he was ready for and swore he would never leave home again.

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      1. Well, if he could rid the neighborhood of rabbits, I would forgive him his thoughtlessness for all the worry he caused us.

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        1. our cats are lovers, not fighters, but the bunnies across the alley don’t know that. They see the delinquents come flying out the back door and take off without sticking around to ask silly questions. So far, they have not demolished the hostas.

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  7. I’ve been owned by 17 cats over the last 15 years and even have a pet cemetery out by the garage. One named “Yoda” died 8 years ago and was properly buried with a small gravestone. One day, as I walked past his grave, I noticed a strange cat I’d never seen before sitting right on top of Yoda’s grave. He did this for several days, just staring at me. This experience haunted me for a while.

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  8. The funniest video not made occurred 20 years ago when my oldest grandchild, Willie, was about 3 years old. The family had gathered at my house for an Easter brunch. Little Will was all dressed up with a shirt and tie. We didn’t notice that he’s slipped out into the front yard, much less that he’d be shown how to use a hose nozzle.

    Suddenly, a strong burst of water hit the living room window and kept coming. He then aimed it at the front door. Several of us tried to go out to put an end to this violent act, only to be shot at as he aimed the stream at each of us. My daughter even tried going out the back door to sneak up on him – to no avail as he spotted then sprayed her as well. There we were, nine adults being held hostage by one 3-year old.

    I couldn’t help but notice the evil glee in his expression every time he soaked one of us! Imagine this as a video on America’s Funniest Video? I have little doubt that it’d win the overall top prize. Also imagine just how powerful he felt?

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  9. I wish we had footage of our set-up in the trailer court those 3 summers in Greeley, CO. We only have a few black-and-white snapshots from the first summer, before we set up our super duper “patio” with linoleum over the “yard” space, the old-fashioned refrigerator right by the door, up on a palate, and the table holding the outdoor kitchen. I really should do a complete post about this…

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  10. There is only one thing that I would ask to be on video and luckily it already is. I came home with my treasure back before 9-11 when you could still go down to the gate at the airport to meet those coming off the plane. When Baby and I got off the plane, there were lots of friends and family in the gate area waiting for us. Signs, balloons, the whole shebang. I should probably get it transferred while I still can – it’s on VHS still.

    OT… Farewell for Homeless in St. Paul is SUNDAY (tomorrow). 2-4 at the prettiest little bungalow in St. Paul. Pot luck. See you there!

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  11. Can’t think of any momentous occasions I’d like recorded. Maybe just a few random moments that pleased me. Buying candied fruit and nuts at Gleason’s thirty years ago, or floating down the St. Croix in a canoe, or saying hello to the neighbor’s dog, Wally, when he used to stand up on the chainlink fence to greet me. I wonder if those things would look the same – if reality would match the memory.

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  12. Well … I have some rather fond memories of my wedding night … but I’m pretty sure video cameras weren’t even invented in 1978. Or if they were, they’d take up half of the honeymoon suite. Not to mention a humongous video camera would be pretty tough to hid in the ol’ overnight bag.

    Seriously, speaking of cats, when we had our little dickenses, I would have loved to have motion-activated cameras in all the rooms of the house to see what they did every day while we were at work. Especially the brother-sister team of Calvin and Patty. I have to believe that some days it was the feline equivalent of mom and dad going away for the weekend and leaving the 15-yr-old twins home alone for the first time in their lives.

    I’d also loved to have some footage of my Little League or Babe Ruth baseball games when I was pitching. Boyhood fantasy dream job number one was pitching for the Twins, and only recently got edged out by the much-later-than-boyhood fantasy dream job of being a pro golfer. I still watch baseball games from the standpoint of a pitcher, trying to think what pitch to throw in a certain situation, trying to outwit the batter with the help of my catcher. One of the great mental/physical chess games in sports: pitcher vs. hitter.

    Other than that, I’d love to have videos of family gatherings where everyone was having a truly good time (not the fake good time so as to not create a scene at a family gathering), and Grandma N. was laughing her most infectious laugh because Grandpa N. was needling her in the way only a long-married couple can get away with, and the kids and grand kids were eating it up, watching the verbal sparring and hearing the humor and feeling the love.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  13. Any occasion with my cousins when we were kids: Easter egg hunts with adults clucking to indicate a child was near an egg, the plays we made up based on Peanuts characters (though we knew enough about copyright to figure we should change some things – so we were Minus, Loopy, Spearmint Patty…), rolling along on giant wooden spools down my grandparents sidewalks (sit on the “spindle” of the spool, use the sides to push like you would wheel chair wheels, and hope you didn’t get the one that pinched bare skin at one spot – ouch!), jumping in the pile of leaves that would be a bonfire later at my cousins’ house…and all of it accompanied by a lot of laughter.

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    1. Ooh, yes! It would be fun to see the time we made one of my younger cousins wear an old army helmet and sat him in the middle of the farm yard and shot firecracker missiles at at him from a homemade cannon made from pop cans.

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    2. I also wish i could see what I looked like as a child visiting my farming cousins when I went with them to get the cows for milking and I had to walk through the pasture while grasshoppers were jumping up around my knees. It took me a long time to get used to it, and I hated those hoppers. I didn’t want my cousins, who were all boys, to think I was a wussy town girl (which I was). So I tried to be brave and nonchalant about the grasshoppers, all the while writhing inside with disgust and anxiety.

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      1. My equivalent was watching my cousins pull ticks from their dog…eew. Just eew. He would just lie on the driveway and let them pull ’em out – big and puffy, small, didn’t matter. Gives me the willies just thinking about it. Don’t need to see *that* on video…

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  15. It would be great to have a video of the farewell for Steve today. That had to be the biggest ever gathering of baboons. It was wonderful seeing so many baboons in one place including a special visitor, Dale Connelly. What a great send off that was for Steve..

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    1. I do wish there had been a live webcam of that event. So glad to hear it was fun.

      Feel free to heap pity upon me, that I had to be at work instead, I was there in spirit.

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