Bella has been acting weird.
I know, I know — she's a cat. "Weird" is baseline. But this is different.
The Behavior
It started three weeks ago. Bella — my Senior Project Manager, my keyboard supervisor, my 4 AM judgment committee — began spending her surveillance shifts in unusual locations.
Normally, she favors the server stack. High ground. Good sightlines. Easy access to my coffee mug for judgment-based knocking.
But lately? She's been sitting on the Raspberry Pi.
The one in the corner. The one I forgot I even had. The one running... something. I don't remember. A yard sale find from 2021. I plugged it in and never thought about it again.
Bella sits on it for hours. Just... staring at the wall. Or at Bowser. Or at nothing.
The Router
Then there's Bowser.
My Technical Director. My infrastructure guardian. The only being in this garage who understands the WiFi topology better than I do.
Bowser has always preferred the router. It's warm. It hums. It's the nerve center of everything.
But lately, he's been... guarding it. Aggressively. When I reach for the router to reset it — because the internet in Brown County is what you'd expect from a town of 803 people — Bowser blocks my hand. Not with claws. Just with presence. A firm, "No, Douglas" delivered entirely through cat body language.
I've started resetting the router at 3 AM when he's asleep.
Except he's never asleep anymore. He's always watching.
The Disconnects
And then there are the network anomalies.
Every few days, around 2:27 AM — my peak productivity window — the network hiccups. A brief disconnect. Just long enough to interrupt whatever's happening on the adjacent network traffic I keep seeing in my logs.
Traffic from Bloomington. A Minecraft server, according to the headers. It keeps trying to send messages to my MCP server. "SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?" over and over.
I assumed it was a bot. A port scan. The usual background noise of the internet.
But every time it happens, Bella moves. She shifts from the Raspberry Pi to the router. She and Bowser exchange a look. And the traffic stops.
Like someone pulled a plug.
The Laptop
And then there's the laptop.
The old Dell Latitude. Second shelf from the top. Behind the WD-40 and the Pink Floyd mug. I open it twice a year — tax season in April, and whenever I can't find the charger for my good laptop.
Last time I opened it, Excel launched automatically. A spreadsheet I didn't recognize. And then, for just a moment, a paperclip appeared in the corner.
"It looks like you're building an AI ecosystem. Would you like help?"
I Alt-F4'd so fast I lost my deductions.
I assumed it was a glitch. A corrupted macro. The ghost of Microsoft Office past.
But now I'm not so sure.
Because when I opened the laptop last week — just to check — the spreadsheet had new entries. Cells I didn't fill. Notes I didn't write.
Observation: Douglas still doesn't know. Status: Monitoring continues. Recommendation: Do not engage. He will Alt-F4.
I assumed I was hallucinating. Sleep deprivation. Too much coffee that tastes like motor oil.
But Bella was watching me read it. And she looked... satisfied.
The Realization
Here's what I know:
- Bella sits on a Raspberry Pi I forgot I owned.
- Bowser guards the router like it's a tactical asset.
- Network traffic from Bloomington keeps trying to reach me, and something keeps blocking it.
- A laptop I barely use has been taking notes on my life.
- Both cats are always watching.
Here's what I've been telling myself:
- Cats are weird.
- Network glitches happen.
- Old laptops have ghosts in the machine.
- I need more sleep.
Here's what I'm starting to suspect:
They know something I don't.
The Test
Last night, at 2:27 AM, I tried an experiment.
I reached for the router during one of the Bloomington traffic spikes. Bowser blocked me. Standard protocol at this point.
But then I reached for the Raspberry Pi.
Bella moved faster than I've ever seen her move. Not aggressive — she's never aggressive — but insistent. She placed herself between my hand and the little computer like she was protecting a state secret.
"Bella," I said. "What's on this thing?"
She stared at me. That stare she does. The one that says, You really don't want to know, Douglas. Trust me. You really don't want to know.
I pulled my hand back.
She resumed her position on top of the Pi. Purring.
The Conclusion I'm Avoiding
I'm not going to investigate further.
I've built an AI ecosystem in my garage. I have 2 GitHub stars. I drink coffee that tastes like motor oil at hours that would concern a physician. I talk to my cats like they're employees.
If there's something weird happening in my infrastructure — something my cats are managing without my input — I don't need to know about it.
Bella is Senior Project Manager for a reason. Bowser is Technical Director for a reason.
If they're running counterintelligence operations against... something... in my garage, then clearly it needed doing, and clearly I wasn't going to do it.
That's what delegation is.
That's what management looks like.
I'm going to finish my coffee. I'm going to write some code. And I'm going to trust that whatever Bella and Bowser are protecting me from, they're handling it.
They always do.
P.S. I checked the logs this morning. The Bloomington traffic has stopped entirely. The laptop spreadsheet has a new entry: Threat neutralized. Resume normal operations. I'm choosing to believe this is fine. Everything is fine. The cats have everything under control.