The Tantalizing Dance: Housecats and their Interactions with Fax Machines. By Baxter Black Esq.

I. Introduction:

In today’s age it is increasingly uncommon to discover an American household without internet access. Regardless of whether their connection is dial-up or high-speed, families now can enjoy vastly enhanced communicative capacity: including instant-messaging, so-called “chat-rooms,” posting messages to one and others on the guest-books of online web-pages, and even simple electronic-mail. While this new era of communication enfranchises many who would otherwise avoid social situations, it should also be noted that it has brought about irreparable changes to our society. Some changes are immediate, while other more subtle changes have gone unnoticed; ignored by people distracted by this whirl-wind of technological advancements. The impact is all the same.
It appears that many people in world are gravely unhappy in their lives despite having access to advances that were not present in the time of their parents or their grandparents. It seems feelings of despair and desperation are eternally on the rise, and studies now show that 16% men and women in the world suffer from some form of chronic depression[1]. The causes of this are varied: situational causes, chemical imbalances, seasonal changes, and etc ad infinitum; all subject to great debate. However: one factor remains irrefutable in these trying times, one cause believed by all to be having a great effect on the mental-landscape or collective unconsciousness. This is the waning numbers of fax machines, those devices that integrated the photocopier with the telephone and made a quiet revolution in business communication. The fax machine (short for telefacsimile machine, derived from Latin[2]) played a great role in our lives, not for their loud, abrupt beeping noises (a precursor of the scrambled sonic exaltations of the dial-up home computer) or their ability to reduce documents and pictures into raw data and transmit said data along conventional telephone wires, but because they provided amusement by offering stimuli to our playful and whimsical cats.
Yes, the cats[3], intrigued by the strange noises and rapid, mechanical movements of the telefacsimile devices, wound often pounce upon them with wide-eyed faces of fascination or perhaps take a swipe at the paper as it fed out the base of the machine. These mirthful games between machine and mouse-catcher gave us hours of earnest, genuine entertainment, allowing us to relax and reflect on the goods things in life rather than concentrating upon the stress and worry. In our blind struggle for technological superiority, we have forgotten what matters most in life and consequently are paying the price. Should there not be a resurgence in fax machine use, or if a suitable fax machine surrogate cannot be found for our cats, this problem could grow to troublesome proportions.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_depression#Prevalence
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax_machine
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat