for all you cat lovers out there...

just what you need, the "control-a-cat" remote control (with buttons for 'Remain Aloof', 'Show Affection' and 'Stop Scratching'):

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/supplies/b640/?cpg=ab

 

Yes, it's just a gag/humor gift. As you can read on the page, it is 'powered by wishful thinking' and 'needs no batteries'. Although I am not a cat lover in the least, I would never post something that was so called "humor" that would actually hurt a pet.

When I was a young teen, I had a friend who lived in a rural area and they had an electric fence around a lot that had a few cattle. He dared me to touch it, so I eventually did. Zap! Obviously it didn't kill me but I wouldn't do it again either.

I used to do electronic work back in the 1970's when I was a teen. My best friend had an old console color TV (it was one of the ones with a round picture tube, probably from about 1964 or so.) I'd worked on a lot of black and white sets but this was my first color set. There was a vaccum tube that was in any tube-type color TV called a "high voltage regulator". What I did not know at the time was that the cap of this tube was connected directly to the anode (plus connection) on the picture tube where 25,000 volts was used to "light" an image on the screen. This voltage was present for a time (hours or days) even after the set was turned off (the voltage would eventually dissapate). I went to take the top cap connection off that vaccum tube and yes, I got a little taste of that 25,000 volts!

The current was extremely low (in the millionths of amperes) so it wasn't deadly and I wasn't hurt in any way, but I have read of people who got shocked like that and had an involuntary mascle contraction that jerked their arm into, for example, a pipe and cracked their elbow.