Homer the computer geek cat

I have blogged more in the past few years about Schroeder than about Homer, but Homer is no slouch himself. Nearing 17, he is not as spry as Schroeder and is afflicted with an ever lengthening list of maladies. He has kidney disease, heart disease, chronic constipation, arthritis, and probably feline herpes and a little dementia. These are more or less controlled with daily amlodipine, lysine, and miralax; he recently finished an extended round of steroids. He refuses to drink out of anything that remotely looks like a water dish, and he will knock over any cup his head won't fit in if he thinks it might have water in the bottom. He has taken to scratching the kitchen cabinet doors, bedroom closet doors, glass shower doors, front door, and back door, while meowing and meowing and meowing, because he knows he needs to get through a door, but he isn't sure which one. He claws my nose or the bedroom furniture at 4am every morning so that I'll let him under the bedcovers with me. He sneezes on my computer and has been leaving dry pooplets on the floor for years.

Fortunately, he still purrs, and despite all of his afflictions, he finds new ways to keep himself occupied. Understandably, he has turned his attention away from hunting mice and crickets to less physical activities. In particular, he enjoys typing on my laptop keyboard. He has downloaded files, conducted internet searches (mostly for long strings of repeated letters), opened music notation software, attempted to post to Facebook, read and tagged emails, and changed web browser settings. He has forced me to learn new things--most significantly, how to turn off Windows Narrator.

Yesterday, he turned on the closed captioning for the video of Schroeder playing fetch. Thanks to Homer, I can now recapture some of the former entertainment value of Google Translate (which, for better or worse, has improved significantly over the past few years) through YouTube's closed caption interpreter. (For those more in-the-YouTube-know than I, such poor translations are apparently old hat.) Among the more impressive phrases:

CC: Could kill her yes cat yes.
[Good job! Here, let's try that again.]

CC: My time.
[Bring me the carrot. C'mon. C'mon.]

The complete CC transcript follows, along with my own transcription. Given how often I repeat the same phrases, I'd think CC might have gotten more than just one "Bring it to me" right. On the other hand, I completely understand that CC had difficulty with "Chickabooj" (international Catspeak for "watch that carrot fly!").

CC: We are going to play Karaoke. Since the carrot this is the cast here we go yes. Re back. Before way yes employ. Goal what's me. Carrots me Trish come. Bonnie good kidding. Recap yes yes. Could kill her yes cat yes. Crash could. Kiddie yes good job picture year. Flying my only time. Okay here we go you ready Hebraic night. Communicator. My time. Me. Go can which I gotta. Kathy ready Trish. Bring it to me. Good shahar chahte in like 20. Like I let you down you can you create an issue. Job could she that's awfully nice. Yes job row hearing. Yes done. 

[We are going to play carrot games. This is the carrot; this is the cat. Here we go. You ready? Yes! Mreow. Bring it back. Good boy! Yes, good boy! Mreow! Yeah, whoops. You ready? Got the carrot. You ready? Chickabooj. Good boy. Good kitty! Where are you gonna put that? Yes. Yes, good job. Here, let's try that again. You ready? Yes! Chickabooj! Good job! Good kitty! Yes, good job, good job, good job. Yeah. Mreow. Mreow. One more time? OK, here we go. You ready? You ready? Mreow? Chickabooj. Bring me the carrot. C'mon. C'mon. There you go. There you go. Good job! Good job! I got it! I got it! You ready? Chickabooj! Bring it to me. Good job. Good job. You gonna let go of it? You gonna let go of it? You're done. You're done. You gonna put it in a shoe? Good job, you put it in a shoe. That's awfully nice. Yes. Good job. Mreow. Yes, good job. Good job. Got it, I got it. You ready? Chickabooj. Yes. Are you done? OK. Good job.]