Alright, let me tell you about this whole “error code cat” thing I dealt with the other day. It wasn’t in any manual, trust me, I looked.
So, I was just trying to get this old piece of software running on a spare machine I have. You know, one of those projects you keep putting off. It was late, probably too late, and I was getting tired. Hit the button to compile the code, and bam! The whole thing just froze. Not like a normal freeze, either. The screen went blank for a second, then popped up this tiny little dialog box. All it said was: Error Code: CAT.
Seriously? CAT? Not like, 0xDEADBEEF or ‘File Not Found’. Just… CAT. My first thought was, okay, maybe it’s an acronym for something? Control-Alt-Something? Configuration Access Trouble? I spent a good ten minutes just staring at it, thinking the lack of sleep was getting to me.
My Brilliant Troubleshooting Steps
Naturally, I did the usual stuff first:
- Turned it off and on again. Like, a hard reset. Pulled the plug even. Still got ‘CAT’.
- Tried booting into safe mode. Nope, same stupid message eventually.
- Dug around for any log files I could find. Nothing useful, just the usual system startup stuff and then… nothing. It was like the error itself didn’t want to be logged.
I was getting properly annoyed now. This wasn’t some high-end server, just an old desktop I use for tinkering. What kind of secret, undocumented error code is ‘CAT’? I even searched online, typing things like “weird error code cat” and “computer says CAT”. Found a lot about cats, not much about error codes.
The Actual ‘Cat’
I figured maybe it was a hardware thing. Overheating? Loose cable? So, I popped the side panel off the desktop case. It’s an older model, big and roomy inside. And guess what I found?
My actual cat. Bartholomew. Fast asleep. Curled up right on top of the graphics card, nestled against the CPU cooler. It was warm in there, see? He’d somehow nudged the main power connector to the motherboard just slightly loose. Enough to cause a weird, unstable power situation that apparently made the system throw the most bizarre error message I’ve ever seen.
He was the error code.
So, I gently scooped up Bartholomew. He wasn’t happy about being woken up. Gave me that grumpy look. I blew out a bit of cat fur, checked all the connections, made sure everything was snug, especially that main power cable he’d used as a pillow. Put the side panel back on.
Fired it up. Worked perfectly. No ‘CAT’ error. The software compiled just fine.
So yeah. That’s my story of the ‘error code cat’. Sometimes the weirdest problems have the simplest, furriest solutions. Makes you wonder about all those complex errors you get sometimes, maybe it’s just a metaphorical cat sleeping somewhere in the system. Or maybe I just need to keep the cat out of my computers. Probably the second one.
