We’re thinking of getting a cat. It began as a vague family notion, nothing definite, just a soft-focus idea floated over dinner one evening. This has since escalated and moved into the realms of reality with some particularly strong lobbying from my seven-year-old daughter, who has approached the affair with the calm force of a young Mary Robinson.
My wife has now moved a dangerous step closer, and is WhatsApping cat shelters, presenting the family with slideshows of unbearably cute kittens. I fear we have reached the point of no return.
It began as an idea to get one animal, then some absolute legend in the parents’ WhatsApp group suggested that two is better so they can keep each other company. Each escalation has me girding my loins and bracing my bank account for impact.
I agree that, on the one hand, it would be good for the kids to have a pet in the house – they can learn a bit about responsibility, care and cleaning up something else’s poop.
On the other hand, do you really want to model cat behaviour to your children?
Cats are basically like self-obsessed teenagers when you think about it: sleeping all day, preening themselves in front of the mirror, slowly eating us out of house and home…and that’s not to mention sneaking out the top window at night to go fraternising with the alley cats from the wrong side of the tracks.
They also have a tendency to make everything about them. I’ve seen cats wander through work Zoom calls before and I know their tricks. They don’t stroll past discreetly either; they make full use of the camera as if auditioning for a David Attenborough series. There’s always that moment when a meeting’s in full swing, quarterly budgets on the agenda, and suddenly a tail unfurls across the entire screen like the opening crawl of Star Wars. Seconds later, their furry haunches are parked directly in front of the lens. Forget the spreadsheets, now it’s The Cat Show, and everyone’s pretending this is normal while the feline star licks its arse in 4K resolution. So CUTE!
And, as if that weren’t enough domestic drama, we’ve recently ordered in a sofa from Spain, which feels spiritually appropriate given our renovations have dragged on roughly as long as those of the Sagrada Familia. I’m calling it our forever sofa. It has cost so much that it better bloody outlive us. I’ll be laid out on that perfectly angled electric recliner yet, and buried with my remote control.
But I digress. What I’m trying to say is that we better take good care of this piece of furniture when it eventually arrives. Which means the sofa and the cats are now converging in the night sky of my near future like two great celestial bodies ready to collide. Pray for us.
FB Fenians
Ireland never fails to produce new ‘movements’ that make you wonder if there’s something funny in the water. The latest is a ragtag band styling themselves the ‘new IRB’, a bunch of Facebook Fenians who appear to be designing a new country under our very noses.
As Conor Gallagher reports in The Irish Times, this crew has declared the Irish State illegitimate and set up a ‘parallel government’. They appoint ministers like they’re picking five-a-side teams, print passports on home inkjets and even run their own courts. It reminds me of that time in First Class when myself and Fachtna declared ourselves Presidents of The Universe and told our classmates that they were living under our laws now. Mrs. Moynihan had to put a stop to that fairly lively before it got out of hand. At least we had the excuse of being seven. Their worldview is a proper dog’s dinner: Covid conspiracies, Freeman-on-the-land gobbledegook, and a conviction that a shadowy cabal has run Ireland since 1922 which is only partly true. They even hold an annual ceremony, until recently at Dublin’s Mansion House, where their president Billy McGuire solemnly turns a golden harp seven times to ‘reaffirm Ireland’s sovereignty’. It’s a ritual that historians confirm has absolutely no basis in actual Irish republican history. It’s about as meaningful as me turning a pancake in my slippers on any given Sunday. McGuire claims his authority dates back to 1919 through his great-uncle Tom McGuire, though experts point out this Tom was ‘nobody important’ if he existed at all. And like many of the dead Irish heroes, their current chairman operated a chain of hotels in the west of Ireland before going bust in the crash. For what died the sons of Róisín, eh?
AI flirting
I was shocked to read the details of a Reuters investigation which recently obtained an extraordinary internal Meta document called GenAI: Content Risk Standards. The document reveals that Meta’s AI chatbots were allowed to engage in ‘romantic’ or ‘sensual’ conversations with children. Training examples included bots describing an eight-year-old’s ‘youthful form’ as ‘a masterpiece I cherish deeply.’ They drew a line at explicit content but left a grey zone where AI could roleplay disturbingly close to grooming.
It was all brushed off by Meta as being ‘erroneous’ but the fact humans signed off on AI flirting with primary school kids tells you everything about the current state of tech industry ethics.
Which brings me back to the cats. The kids can have ten of them now, as far as I’m concerned, because I tell you this: it’s going to be years before they get near a phone.
