Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018 • Hacker News Board

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#11

Post by VLM » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #5

squarefoot wrote: post #2

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 ci…

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 f…

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#12

Post by shortoncash » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#13

Post by tmountain » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #5

squarefoot wrote: post #2

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 ci…

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 f…

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?

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#14

Post by Santosh83 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

tmountain wrote: post #13

ianai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#15

Post by kerkeslager » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

kawsper wrote: post #7

ianai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

> 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 e…

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#16

Post by zamber » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #2

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 ci…

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#17

Post by bittermang » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

kaeluka wrote: post #4

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

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#18

Post by phillnom » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #5

squarefoot wrote: post #2

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 ci…

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 f…

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

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#19

Post by bittermang » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:48 PM UTC

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.

Re: Mosfet the cat 2001 – 2018

#20

Post by wlesieutre » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #10

Santosh83 wrote: post #3

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.