The Tale Of The Virtual Cat - Heather Gladney, Don Clayton and Alan Rice Osborne - Short Story

The Tale Of The Virtual Cat
Heather Gladney, Don Clayton and Alan Rice Osborne
Catfantastic IV
DAW Books
Copyright, 2001

When you've got bugs in the system, get a programmer. When you've got Mice in the mains, get a Cat.

So says the introduction to Catfantastic IV, in introducing one of the most memorable stories in that volume. Ten years later, and the story still works. I guess technology hasn't progressed enough yet to make it seem too dated - and no specific dates are mentioned within the story itself either.

The Tale of the Virtual Cat is one of the funniest I've read in a long time - I just re-read it too, as it's been about a month since I read it as part of the whole Catfantastic IV volume.

All of the main characters - Mary, Beverly and especially the cat, Dickens are full of personality and combine to make one heck of an entertaining story. And the technological background of the story works too, at least in my mind. I'm sure that folks who know more about technology though, will be happy to give me a dozen or so ways that this story can't work. I'm just happy to laugh at it.