Solving Bioshock Cats on National Cat Day

Today, October 29, is National Cat Day and to celebrate I shall share with you a partial SOLUTION to the BIOSHOCK Cats Mystery.

Including cats for the player to discover actually IS a game-within-the-game.

While it is still unknown who originally designed the black-and-white cat and put him/her in the original Bioshock, all the level designers of Bioshock 2 participated in finding fun places to stash kitties. And...

We have Steve Gaynor to thank for putting NAMED cats in Minerva's Cave.
All Hail Steve!!

There are THREE cats - one for each level of Minerva's Cave. The names of each feline honor someone important to the development of computing - which is of course very important in the Cave storyline. I found Babbage and Turing, you may remember.

Armed with this information, I set about to find the third kitty on my second playthrough - and discovered:

Lovelace

According to Wikipedia, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace is recognized as the World’s First Computer Programmer, having written the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine.

For whose computer did she write this? Charles Babbage’s.

Babbage called her the Enchantress of Numbers and wrote of her in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864):

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

Fun facts:
 - Ada was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron.
 - The computer language Ada created by the US Department of Defense is named after her.
 - The British Computer Society awards a medal in her name.
 - There is a movement to have an Ada Lovelace Day (which this year was October 7).

I didn't know any of that, so I am now a better informed person because of Bioshock's dead cats.  :)

Many thanks and virtual cupcakes to Steve for allowing me to interview him on the subject of virtual kitties. He's a wonderful fellow and you can follow his tumblr and his twitter.

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Set Sail For Horror

I commissioned Francesco Francavilla for something Lovecraftian with cats

and this is the fabulous, wickedly brilliant picture he created for me!!!

So I thought I'd share it with you, since it is Halloween-time.

You can commission him, too, by the way.

And follow him on Twitter.

Hidden History of Salem Video with New Soundtrack

I have re-done my HIDDEN HISTORY OF SALEM book-teaser

because MY BOOK INSPIRED A SONG

and that is just too cool not to share:

Buy the book!  You'll like it. Click here 

There's real history plus cool obscure facts plus ghost cats and candy and coffee and romance and a horrible murder - all sorts of interesting things. And we haven't even gotten to the witches.

Buy the single, too! It should be coming out in the next month or so. I'll keep you posted. 

Schrodinger the Cat

I stand corrected - there IS a named cat in Bioshock 2.

I was scavenging in the frozen Imago gallery, melting things - as you will when you're scavenging, and I melted a pile of ice to discover another Bioshock cat.

This one was upright, not tipped over. Like a living cat would be, except he's frozen. I moved my reticle to see if any word would come up for this kitty.

And laughed. I found Schrodinger the cat! 

He's an Easter egg I'd heard about and forgotten, so I was very pleased to have stumbled upon him. (Being frozen, he is both alive and dead at the same time = Schrodinger's cat.)

If the upcoming Bioshock Infinite doesn't have this cat in it, I shall be highly disappointed. 

Cats in Minerva’s Den

The mystery of Bioshock’s cats deepens….

Okay, if you follow this blog, you know that there is one specific dead cat populating both the original Bioshock and Bioshock 2.

No dogs, no other cats. Just one black & white kitty who can be discovered in corners all over Rapture. And who wears solely the designation “corpse” – if anything at all.

Well.

I was playing the Bioshock 2 DLC Minerva’s Den and I found the cat again.

AND THIS TIME IT HAS A NAME:

His name is Babbage!

Much later in the adventure, I found another cat.

I had already jumped through this hole in the floor before I noticed him, so you don't have a good view of the cat's body. But you can see that he, too, has a name.

A DIFFERENT name!

This cat is named Turing!

Now, I immediately recognized that as a reference to famous British codebreaker, computer scientist, mathematician, and father of artificial intelligence Alan Turing.

So I looked up Babbage and - as you may already know - Charles Babbage was a British "mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer," according to Wikipedia.

So now we know the theme of the cat names in Minerva's Den. But...

HOW MANY CATS ARE THERE?

If you have spotted a named cat in Bioshock, please comment here with the name. It would be interesting to collect them all.

And we still don't know whose idea these cats were.

Yes, the Bioshock cat mystery deepens….

Bioshock Cats UPDATE

For all of you who have wondered about the prevalence of dead cats – or rather, one dead cat in particular – in Bioshock, the mystery continues….

Remember my blog post about this cat in original Bioshock? Well, the same cat appears in Bioshock 2. And this time, I have photos. (It’s like the Loch Ness Monster! Pictorial proof!)

Okay, here is your typical Bioshock cat:
















See how it looks like it just tipped over? Not like the icky corpses of people.

That circle you see over its front paws is my PS3 reticle. You’ll notice no descriptive word has come up to identify the being.

Now here is a Bioshock cat you can uncover if you melt a specific pile of ice. This cat appears to have been frozen with some fish and a fisherman (perhaps its owner?).

















This time, when the reticle is placed on the kitty, it is labeled “Corpse.” Same as the person.

And here is a kitty in a baby buggy. It is also merely labeled "Corpse."

In case you’re wondering, there are some models of dogs in Bioshock 2. They’re statues (possibly broken animatronics) located on this museum/ride thing that teaches children why Rapture was necessary. But no real dog bodies. Only real cats.

So the cat mystery continues.

Bioshock Dead Cats

I'm playing Bioshock (the first one) on my PS3. I'm trotting around. Shooting stuff. Evolving. Y'know how it is.

And I notice there are a lot of dead cats strewn about the place.

Not in piles or anything. And not gory, either. In fact, unlike the people, they look completely fine. Like they just tipped over and fell asleep. There's generally one per floor/section of each area, so if you scavenge--and I scavenge like a boss thanks to Fallout New Vegas--you're going to find a bunch of them.

They're never labelled "cat." If any word comes up at all when you put your reticle thing on them, it just says "corpse."

So I started to think, I wonder if one of the game's developers likes cats. Maybe has a cat like that. Because it's one specific black & white cat.

I can totally see someone sticking their own cat in a game. Probably because it's the sort of thing I'd do. (I did put my pug in a book, after all.)

So as I was sitting through the credits--yes, I sit through all credits, film ones, game ones. What? They're cool.

Anyway, I was sitting through the credits and I saw one fellow thanked his wife and his cats.

The quotes weren't attributed, but I totally want to ask this person if they are responsible for the prevalence of cats in Bioshock.

And thank him for a job well done.  :)

Litter Shark Alert

I bought an automatic-cleaning litter box the other day. The cats loved it.

Then one of them happened to catch sight of it doing its auto-clean. He has refused to use it since.

I closed him in the bathroom (where the litter box is) with me to show him it was harmless....

Cat:  “I saw it move. I saw that thing rise up and open it’s maw like a shark.”

Me:  “Okay, no more you watching tv with me. It’s giving you wrong ideas. There are no litter sharks.”

Cat:  “I know what I saw.”

Me: (picks up litter scoop, runs it across pan)  “Look. See? Nothing happens.”

Cat:  “Just wait. It won’t STAY dormant if you keep POKING IT WITH A STICK.”

Me:  “Honestly. It’s on a timer. It will never touch you.”

Cat:  “See how my nose is pressed to the crack between the door and jamb? That means I want OUT.”

Me:  “But it’s perfectly safe.”

Cat:  “Yeah, right. You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Pug vs Cat (the non-violent protest)

Squirrel Purrs

Chibi Me

CHIBI ME!

It's like Mini Me, only better! lol

This is my new avatar over on Facebook (and GoodReads too, for that matter).
The art is done by the truly talented @nursethalia.

Feel free to "like" it on Facebook.  :)

http://www.facebook.com/Author.Susanne.Saville

Cat Uses iPad

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One of these things...

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Wuthering About HeathKitty

I saw a new-to-me version of Wuthering Heights on Netflix last night and now I'm wondering if I should watch it or not.

You see, I don't like Wuthering Heights.
Love Jane Eyre.
Really don't like Wuthering Heights. Yes, I get that Heathcliff is a classic romantic doomed hero.

But Cathy married another man!

So, instead of being HeathKitty, he should have moved on. Why did he even like her to begin with? She was mean to him, selfish and annoying.

And she married another man!

How's that going to work in the afterlife? Remember, there's that thing about how Cathy and Heathcliff are ghosts together at the end--but what's-his-name is going to be there, too, right? I mean, they're buried all in a row. Are they going to have a threesome?

But I've seen several of the other adaptations - including the Timothy Dalton (yum!) version, so I should probably watch this other one just to complete the set.

What do y'all think? Are there some Wuthering Heights fans out there who disagree with my assessment?

Every Writer's Nightmare

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