Hungry cat stops computer dead in its tracks

We have an older male feline named Sir who, while large in frame, at 20 pounds is considerably overweight. This is our fault because, it being bothersome to ration food between three cats, we took the easy way out by leaving food out all the time so they wouldn't bother us. Surprisingly, our oldest cat has done just fine with this approach, but our youngest one has recently ballooned and Sir has been too heavy for years.

When we recently took Sir to the vet because his ears seemed to be bothering him, the vet suggested Sir might be allergic to the food we have been feeding him and suggested we try a special diet involving a meat he had never eaten before. This meant we had to get serious about rationing food between the three cats since we couldn't afford to feed the expensive food to all of them. And since we were rationing we decided we might as well restrict portions to something closer to normal.

Now you have to be careful about putting cats on a diet so we decided to ease them into it by feeding them "only" three times a day. After a few days they are starting to settle into a routine of morning, mid afternoon, and evening. This translates into a hungry cat standing on you in bed in the morning and staring you in the face and "hungry cat conventions" in the kitchen in the afternoon and evening. And you know how cats are when they want something from you - they start rubbing up against things and meowing.

So I'm sitting at the kitchen computer today using the computer and ignoring the cats and this just won't do. To get my attention, Sir comes over and rubs up against the front of the computer and I reach over trying to push him away so he won't accidentally press the power button. It is a typical home-brew tower machine with USB and audio connectors on the front. I'm not sure what the combination of events was but one swipe of Sir's hulking frame and static-prone fir and zap - the computer was frozen in it's tracks. That will teach me to ignore a hungry cat!

This gets me to thinking that perhaps those connections aren't properly grounded for electrostatic discharge (ESD). The front panel connector cables just go right to the motherboard and I'm sure even the grounds don't properly handle ESD. So I guess it is time to take the computer apart and see about adding some grounding straps right from the metal on the connectors to the sheet metal frame. This proved effective on another machine I had build a while back so I'll try the same cure on this one as well. Perhaps this can be the subject of a future blog including some pictures of the results.

.-.-.