I had heard the pager beep three times calling me into work to fix a server issue, but Leila was having kittens. I mean that literally—she was a tortoiseshell who was just starting to give birth in a warm box by the radiator in my kitchen.
I had walked out to my car already and then turned around out of concern. I wasn't even sure what I could do, should anything untoward happen. The dog Pringle had been surprisingly interested. But Silicon Valley server farm problems and unhappy customers wait for no man.
Eventually I pulled out my web camera and set it to record. I could maybe monitor the births from work. Leila was big and round and heavy with her unborn brood.
The pager went off again, so I ran out to the car and raced down to Menlo Park on the empty night-time freeway.
Getting into work, I apologised to Sridhar for being slow to respond. We trawled through the cables and power units on Isle 6B. I wanted to set up my laptop and tune into the IP camera, but pretty soon we were replacing a set of GPU units and the task was not conducive to distractions.
Surprisingly everything worked—the lights were flickering green and I said a quick goodbye to Sridhar and sped home again.
I didn't know what to expect, but the sight in the kitchen was beautiful: Six tiny little kittens had been born. My dog Pringle was curled up by the box in shared animal concern, and Leila was licking her now suckling litter. My heart was full of wonder at Nature and the Universe. I took a quick photo for Instagram, and then I guess I took a lot more photos.
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