Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018 | Hacker News Reader

Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

blog.adafruit.com

264 pointsjonbaer36 comments

RIP Mosfet, sorry to read that. Cats are wonderful life (and lab) companions. I also have a couple and had others I miss a lot. All of them had their personal character, habits and quirks, but invariably all of them have this fantastic common trait in all cats: curiosity! I just love when they stare at us when we're doing something; they don't interfere, just sit there and watch. One of them apparently didn't like circuit boards; one day I was looking at a circuit board I just finished soldering, then that cat came closer, looked briefly at the pcb and started hitting it with his paws... that was hilarious, just like telling me i sucked at soldering stuff.:) Probably there were light reflections on the solder joints he didn't like, but whatever... He and another one were also attracted by ultrasound, I discovered this when testing a 40KHz transducer connected to the signal generator: as soon as I hit the transducer resonance the cats rushed in the lab from 2 rooms away meowing... apparently they can hear 40KHz from distance but also totally ignore you when you call them a meter away. I just love those animals!:)

Get a new one soon, there are countless of them in need of someone taking care!

Apparently they can’t hear male voices. Their hearing is sensitive to higher frequencies than most male voices and the usual human range. I usually chirp or make other high pinched noises to get their attention-though still get ignored much of the time, of course.

Also apparently they’ll attack whats in our hands as they think they’re helping us hunt.

They really are great. I was lucky to have a cat part of my life for 2 months shy of 20 years. I learned a lot from him and still miss him absolutely every day. He knew many human words - would come running and even let us hold him up to swat at whatever bug was flying around, if needed.

> Apparently they can’t hear male voices. Their hearing is sensitive to higher frequencies than most male voices and the usual human range. I usually chirp or make other high pinched noises to get their attention-though still get ignored much of the time, of course.

Not unlike dogs. My girlfriend is a pet behaviourist, but sees mostly dogs. And she says that one of the hardest problems is getting the male owners to engage with their dogs in a higher-pitched, fun and excited voice.

That seems like a red flag for someone who’s emotionally cold.

I can't imagine why. I'm a fairly manly dude, wear leather jackets and boots, fairly muscular. Bring a friendly dog around and I sound like a cooing baby.

I've had also an adopted cat for 14 years - and he was this standard cat - an asshole. Still was very loved.

But even if adopting is very nice - you get a cat for free and help the poor animal, me and my wife wanted a maine coon for a long time, so we bought one.

Together with us for two years. And he's like a dog - plays fetch, and when you call his name, he comes to you. I have deep-ish voice, and he certainly hears me and understands words like his name, "negalima" (can't do that/not allowed in lithuanian), and he certainly knows the word "skanėstas" (treat). He's so unbelievably friendly, anytime I tap on my lap when I'm sitting, if he sees that - he comes and curls on lap instantly.

He's also very gentle. I was surprised - when playing, he very very rarely bites bare hand. All cats that I know have no problems biting and clawing your bare hand when playing. Funny when friends come over - oh my god, he looks dangerous - big and has this evil look. Gentle giant indeed.

Maine coons are great.

The standard cat is not an asshole. It's just that unlike the standard dog, you have to earn a cat's respect and that takes time and effort. It's the same as with humans: if you think all or even most cats are assholes, the problem is probably you, not cats.

Scientific resources online seem to disagree about sound range, which is both wider and more sensitive than human hearing or voices.

http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html

Cat sensitivity is a good 6 dB more sensitive so even if they're peakier in treble than humans, they still hear human males from further away than humans can hear them. Somewhat intuitively this makes sense, lots of human powered evolution to make dogs work well with males would force excellent hearing of male voices.

Also you can run a reasonably intelligible for all voices telephone service off 300 to 4000 hz for a century or so, so no point debating 50 hz cutoff vs 75 hz or whatever, its vastly wider band than telco standards either way. Something kids under 30 will never experience is before digital vocoders and high bit error rate cell phones, telco voice service was somewhat hi-fidelity almost AM radio sound quality. Maybe someday voice communication will be that high quality again.

Cats of course are very intelligent and can train humans to do all kinds of stuff that is likely very amusing to cats, as per the anecdotes of them training their humans to perform in singsong voices and whatever.

As my gf said - cat fascinated by laser pointer => human fascinated by cat.

More than an echo of Montaigne's famous quote, "when I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me?"[1]

1: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne#Book_II

Communications grade audio, used to sound pretty good.

I don't see how can be true. My cat comes to me when I call it from across the house. I'm a man with a relatively deep voice. How could this be?

From my own experience, it's not true. Another comment explains why: they can hear better than humans at both ends of the spectrum. So they can absolutely hear low pitch male voices.

The shape and size of their ears would lead one to believe they can't hear male voices, but they can.

I think they can hear male voices, but cats seem more responsive when I meow to them -- not 100% responsive though! (I can do a cat voice that'll fool many humans.)

I've got one cat that's around 1.5y old. Some time ago I was playing an FPS game and he looked at my left and and the screen and then back again, finally made eye contact and again looked at the screen.

I'm pretty sure he in that moment groked that I can control the movement of the character on the screen with the keyboard.

Also we've got a cat that watches Netflix with us. Sits somewhere with his gaze glued to the screen.

I highly recommend anyone to read about cat body language and how to behave to not irritate them. Cats turn into assholes when people around don't understand the cues they give. Eventually they stop giving cues and just go away or are aggressive. It's best to compare how cats in a cat cafe behave compared to home cats of people that know how they behave.

> apparently they can hear 40KHz from distance but also totally ignore you when you call them a meter away

Just because they can hear you, doesn't mean they choose to respond. :)

My hearing isn't quite that good, but my wife would ascribe to me similar behavior.

Sorry for your loss, adafruit.

I have not developed a single line of code without a cat by my side for 11 years now. While they occasionally walk all over my keyboard, they are more effective than the Apple Watch at getting me to stand up, walk around, and interact with the world. Cats are truly great; their antics definitely spur engineering creativity.

Would it be inappropriate to ask for the black banner, in recognition of Mosfet?

Just reading the article, you can tell what a pillar of love he was for everyone at Adafruit. I'm sitting here crying for a cat I never met, because I can feel the love for him bleeding through my screen. He was a hell of a guy, and a hell of a friend to everyone he knew.

If we can give a Britsh navy cat (Simon) a medal in recognition for his service, then I say we can also respect and give tribute to Mosfet as a great developer and hacker, in his own cat way.

He is visually indistinguishable from several blacks I've had over the years. They have wonderful personalities, and I can't imagine what led people to think them ill omens. Lovely story, and am sure he will live on in the hearts and minds of everyone who knew him. :-)

I adopted my two nearly all black tuxedo cats after learning that black cats get adopted less often because people think they're bad luck. If they won't then I'll just have to adopt all the black cats.

I've heard this before, but when I've adopted my cats I didn't see a particularly large number of black cats at the shelters. Last time there was maybe 1 of 15, and he was in a brother/sister pair that wanted to be adopted together (otherwise I might have taken him!). Maybe it's a regional thing? Or maybe my experience is unusual.

Similarly unconfirmed reports from twitter that the Black Panther movie has emptied shelters of all of their black cats. I can believe that pretty easily.

Black cats rock. I think there is a correlation between cat color and their personality. Black cats always have gentle disposition, orange cats not so much :D.

Black cats always have gentle disposition, orange cats not so much :D

Hey! :p

It varies a lot. Orange cats are usually male which could make a difference. My handle is for my favorite cat when I was growing up, who liked me because I'd sneak food to him at the dinner table.

Black cats rock. I think there is a correlation between cat color and their personality. Black cats always have gentle disposition, orange cats not so much :D. Plus I like their ninja, black panther look.

Back in the days of CRTs, I had a cat named Trouble. She would sleep on top of my 15" Monitor. Friends and family would invariably remind me how I shouldn't let this happen. This monitor I got for free lasted for years being Trouble's favorite spot.

Trouble disappeared never to be seen again. And within a month the monitor stopped working.

If it wasn't for the cats we had when I was a kid, I'd be a different person today :')

same 4 myself :3

my 1st cat was killed by neighbor's dog when I was 4 years old

life never was the same since then

I'll never forget the day my mother called to tell me that their cat had died in an accident, suffering. I was (technically) grown up then, and it was many years ago, but it still hurts. Writing this hurts :(

I feel like pets are an indispensable friend for a young kid to have.

An animal can teach a child about unconditional love, in a way nothing else really can. And about loss. And really, life itself.

I wish cats lived as long as people. You would meet your kitten when you were a small child and they would be your companion for life. Ours are 17 now, a good age, I am dreading the day :-/

I am the tiniest bit disappointed that Mosfet didn't have three legs.

Mosfets are 4-terminal devices!

But one of the terminals is called "body"...

Suddenly makes me think of Heinlein's "The Door into Summer".

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