Are you smarter than a Porch Kitty?

 In order for you to be able to fully appreciate the humiliation of the following events that transpired a few days after Christmas, you will need some background information - for context and perspective - which will possibly explain some past and future post. So here it goes..... 

My mother has Alzheimers. She lives 17 miles from me (one way - I  make this drive A LOT). She is 78. My oldest brother lives with her. He is 56 and mildly disabled. He has had a debilitating panic and anxiety disorder for most of his adult life. Severe enough to have be "officially"disabled and on SSI. Then he had a stroke 2 1/2 years ago. One the best of days neither of these two have any tech knowledge at all to speak of.  And they live together, just them, alone.  It's approximately 20 miles away from me with half of that drive being down one of the darkest roads ever. I do not understand this towns aversion to street lights but it is a problem. Again, this is one way. You will come to understand why I am emphasizing this fact. What this means for me, is that everytime they need guidance with any 21st century technology, I have to drive over there. And it is usually to just plug in a phone, that only has a dead battery - is not broken. Or, to help them set up a new phone that just needs the new sim card inserted. And even on occasion to change batteries and to give yet another lesson on how to work the remote to the TV. And yes I have tried to do this over FaceTime - abysmal failure every time. 

This is essence of this post and how I was "temporarily" bested by a CAT.

 So for Christmas, both my other brother and I came up with gifts that we feel will add quality of life to my moms daily routine, or at the very least reduce stress. My brother  bought my mother a Portal for Christmas - which will make their video calls much better.  My husband and I had got her a pet locator tag for her cat Midnight. 

~~About Midnight. 

My mom lives out in the country and always has at least 4 porch kitties - usually many more. The number goes up and down, because  1.they do not all survive - obviously - snakes and coyotes are prevalent out there. And 2. they are quite slutty. Someone is always pregnant or nursing. But we love them and they love us. They have basically made the porch their home. - Hell, even the skunks even come up to the porch at night for food and hang with the kitties. I have almost pet one more than once. My mother is a helicopter mom to all of them - always worrying that they will freeze to death, but yet she never brought them inside, I guess because was so many??? Although, my cat Bandy, came from her place. We found her abandoned and covered in ants just hours old. I bottled raised her and she lives with me now. She is an inside only baby (She doesn't know that she is a C-A-T and she is watching me as I type this so ssshhhh) Anyhow, one day when it was below freezing, one of the porch kitties strolled inside and my mom has held it prisoner there ever since. For the most part the cat is pretty content being inside, loves my mom and is the sweetest and most agreeable cat I have ever met. Especially for a wild kitty. He is solid black, hence the name Midnight. He looks very much like my mother last cat MoJo that she had for years that is buried now right outside the front of her house. HOWEVER - Midnight sleeps more soundly than any living creature - human or animal, that i have ever encountered. My brother says that on more than one occasion, he has had to shake him to make sure he was still alive. All of this would not be an issue except Midnight, like every other cat in the history of cats, likes to sleep in some secret cozy place that is tucked away from sight. The problem this causes is when my mom goes to look for him, and when she inevitably can't find him she starts to call his name. Well, he does not wake up and come running to my moms more and more urgent demands to know where he is. Then she will become hysterical and call me crying because "Midnight is gone!" She will not listen to reason, she will further insist that he is outside being eaten by coyotes as we speak. Completely inconsolable. Ths happens practically every night. Then after a 30 minute phone call which consists merely of me listening to her bawling while trying to get her to stop wandering around her property in the dark, to go back inside and relax. Finally, after about four or five identical calls of this nature she will abruptly go into radio silence. (I breath a sigh if relief) 😌 Then, without fail, I will get a call from her 30 minutes to an hour later to see how I am doing, is my door locked - the usual, and "the Cat? What about him?" she will ask. Of course the cat has made an appearance and she laughs it off like it was nothing. Just about every night. So our gift to her for Christmas (and in a way to me too) was a tracking tag that just attaches on the collar and is tracked with a remote that lights in varying shades of red and green if you are pointing in in the direction of the cat. It will pick up the signal through walls and will track up to within 1" and it will only pickup the tag at all if it is within 400'. It's not quite as easy to use as I would have like because I had to teach my mom but.... 

Attempt 1

So on Christmas day, she opened the gift, loved it and I got the tag and the remote linked. The entire time I am doing this, the cat is sitting under the coffee table, no more than 3 feet from me, with his collar on. I remember this specifically because the collar had a jingle bell and I was thinking to myself if I was going to have to take it off or not. So at last I am done, and I look up and the cat is gone!!!!  Well, I am pretty determined to get this tag on this cat before I leave so my mom, brother, husband and myself spend about 30 minutes trying to find the cat. Finally - there is the fuzzy little rascal under the bed - but... WTF??? NO COLLAR - are you freaking kidding me???? He has had that collar on for weeks in preparation for this very event. But somehow, in the last minute and a half it took me to set up his tracker, he managed to not only slink away unnoticed, but also managed to remove his collar and HIDE IT. That's right, the collar was MIA. (I have not entirely ruled out the possibility of this being an inside job!) So yep, we spent at least another 30 minutes looking for the collar - which still has not been located to this day.

Basically this Cat Outsmarted Four Grown Adult Humans without breaking a sweat and had time to take a nap while doing so. 😩😖

Attempt 2

As previously mentioned, my brother that lives in Brooklyn, got her a Portal for Christmas. Well he and I spent more than one long and gut busting hilarious phone calls trying to get the portal linked to her Facebook and Amazon account prior to arrival. If you have ever had to verify a Facebook on a new device after having reset the password than you are already familiar with the ridiculously convoluted task of identifying random people that are in photos that are associated the the Facebook account you are trying to verify. This is problematic because not only are we trying to not involve her for SO MANY REASONS, but namely because it is a gift and even if we did consult her; she has freaking Alzheimer's and isn't gonna know who half those people are anyhow. - Even a person without memory issues would be hard pressed to pass this verification process on the first try as it can literally be ANYONE tag in a photo that is in anyway linked to your account. Is there anyone out there that can claim to know every person that is in anyway tagged on their profile? If there is I will do cartwheels thru the middle of Walmart in my pj's. Well, the gift from my brother did not get delivered by Christmas, so I had to drive back out there once it arrived to set this up, and my plan was to get the new cat collar attached to the cat and put an end to those nightly terribly upsetting phone calls. But, if you have picked up on the theme of my life - things never go as planned and are rarely easy. It took about an hour of cleaning off my moms shelf and table that is by the chair she sits in, where we wanted to set up the Portal. I found gift cards from 2011 - this is not an exaggerations. And so may magazines. All of which she kept insisting that I take home to read - to which I would decline because she got them from me int the first place so I have already read them. "Oh, Okay," she would say - followed by "Make sure you take all the magazines with you to read so they don't go to waste." And this repeated for the entire hour. 😑 Finally got the Portal working, made the call to my brother - by this time it's after eight. Al I have to do is put the new collar with the tag inserted onto the cat. I CANNOT FIND THE CAT!!!! 😭 My mother then informs me that the tracking must suck if we can't find the cat. At this point I am too exhausted to explain that we can't track the cat until we get the locator on it but.... I still got calls the next few days to tell me it's not working.😡

Attempt 3

I am getting the God Damn tracker on this cat no matter what it takes!!! I have an extremely limited time frame to accomplish this. But, the third time truly must be the charm. I walked in, the cat was on my mom's lap, and I got the collar on with extraordinary ease. I gave my mother a refresher course on the tracker remote (and the Portal), and then got the heck down the road while still basking in the glow from my long awaited triumph. I think the cat was feeling guilty. Either that or he finally had enough of listening to my mom frantic pleas, then demands that he show himself!!! Either way - the tracker has worked like a charm! I have not had even a single call about the cat and she loves being able to have the peace of mind that he is not being devoured by coyotes while she is watching TV. The Portal, now, that is another matter  - will require another trip but I'm overdue for a visit anyhow. 😉

Total Hours Spent on Cat Tracker:   7 Hours  
= 2 hours online research + 2 hours drive time collectively + 1.5 hours setting up and syncing tracker and remote + 1.5 hours looking for either cat or collar  

Total Miles Driven for Cat Tracker:  136 Miles
= 34 miles to drop off gifts + 34 miles Attempt 1+ 34 miles Attempt 2 + 34 miles Attempt 3 

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