{"id":186915,"date":"2013-08-24T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T01:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/08\/24\/how-i-vanquished-the-rp\/"},"modified":"2013-08-24T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T01:56:00","slug":"how-i-vanquished-the-rp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/08\/24\/how-i-vanquished-the-rp\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Vanquished the RP!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 400px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/G2sGwFU.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" bordercolor=\"white\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/G2sGwFU.jpg\" width=\"390\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>RP is now in custody.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"293\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A2iW4_8bFOA\" width=\"390\"><\/iframe><br \/>How I constructed the cat-trapinator, the video<\/i><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/5HauYx6.jpg\" width=\"188\" \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/qY5WZ0W.jpg\" width=\"188\" \/><br \/>How the motion detector works<\/div>\n<p>My readers may recall my travails with <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/RP%20the%20Cat\">RP the Cat<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Well, I have finally defeated RP, an animal with a brain the size of a walnut, using my allegedly superior brain.<\/p>\n<p>In my first encounter with RP, as a kitten about 2 years ago,&nbsp; when we caught her in a &#8220;have a heart&#8221; type trap.<\/p>\n<p>We brought her in, and when she was released, she ran around the basement at relativistic speeds, and then she beat me up, and ran up into the basement suspended ceiling.<\/p>\n<p>She found her way out of the house the next day, so I chalked it up to experience, until, a couple of months later, when we got our new cats, she started venturing back to eat their food.<\/p>\n<p>Sharon<sup>*<\/sup> told me that the cat was going in and out of the house, but I was dubious until until I <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2012\/02\/i-have-cat-infestation.html\">caught it on time-lapse video<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Well, the other day, I got a frantic call from my wife:&nbsp; RP had lured Destructo into the ceiling, and she and kids had to rescue him.<\/p>\n<p>So, I decided to get serious about catching the cat.<\/p>\n<p>First, I used a bunch of wire ties to attach the have a heart trap to the travel cage we used to transport Lavi and Tudza when we moved from Texas to Maryland.<\/p>\n<p>Then I put food, water, and a catnip sock in the cage, and we took to locking our cats, Meatball\/Mousetrap and Destructo in the bathroom in the evening.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, this did not work.  RP was too smart:  She stepped over the trigger plate of the trap.<\/p>\n<p>So, I had to figure a way to detect her, and trigger the trap.<\/p>\n<p>First, I bought a remote controlled electrical outlet for twelve bucks at Home Depot.<\/p>\n<p>I plugged my Dremel tool into this outlet, and then tied the business end to the trap plate, so when the power goes on, it triggers the trap.<\/p>\n<p>Then borrowed my Son&#8217;s phone, and installed <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=dk.mvainformatics.android.motiondetectorpro.activity\">Motion Detector Pro<\/a>, which uses the camera as a motion sensor, turned off sleep mode for the phone (It&#8217;s under development in settings), and put it on top of the cage.<\/p>\n<p>I then tested the motion detector using our cats, and it worked. <\/p>\n<p>Finally, I got myself a <a href=\"http:\/\/ustream.tv\/\">Ustream<\/a> account, put the Ustream app on my phone, and used my laptop&#8217;s webcam to stream an image of the cage to the web.<\/p>\n<p>Well, at about 2:00 am Saturday morning, I got the text, and I looked at the video, and the cat was there, so I hit the remote, and headed downstairs.<\/p>\n<p>Much to my surprise, I had caught the cat, so I removed the trap from the cage, put a tray with some kitty litter inside, and went to bed.<\/p>\n<p>Now we have to decide what we do after she gets spayed (she has already had 2-3 litters).<\/p>\n<p>In the short term, we are trying to see if she is amenable to being adopted.<\/p>\n<p>If not, we find her some place far away where she can live as a barn cat.<\/p>\n<p>So, by using more computing power than was available to the Apollo program, I finally managed to catch the cat.<\/p>\n<p>And there was much rejoicing.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">Love of my life, light of the cosmos, <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: bold;\">she who must be obeyed<\/span>, my wife.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RP is now in custody. How I constructed the cat-trapinator, the video How the motion detector works My readers may recall my travails with RP the Cat. Well, I have finally defeated RP, an animal with a brain the size of a walnut, using my allegedly superior brain. In my first encounter with RP, as &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[976,1132,1246,1025,1027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-pets","category-rp-the-cat","category-technology","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}