A very happy accident for Mochi’s owner, Jessica Schleider, was brought on by her cat’s inquisitive nature and obsession with flashy computer and television screens.
Mochi has loved putting herself in between Schleider and her work from the very beginning.
The cat was found as a stray living inside a UPS truck with two of her kittens and was adopted by Schleider and her partner when the couple was still in graduate school.
“She was enthralled with my laptop from the start,” Schleider told The Dodo. “I think she visited multiple websites over the course of this particular nap.”
Now that Schleider is a psychology assistant professor at Stony Brook University, where she concentrates on conducting research on mental health, a large portion of her work entails requesting money to enable her to carry out the necessary study.
And the last time Schleider decided to take a break, she was actually doing just that. She wanted to be sure she had crossed all the metaphorical “i’s” before submitting the application because the grant she was looking for was really significant and worth $100,000.
I decided to take our dog Penny for a walk outside while working from home before “taking the leap,” she added.
It so happened that Mochi, while Schleider was out, decided to insert herself into Schleider’s work in a whole new way.
When Schleider came back, she looked at the screen and realized something had happened.
“I discovered that she’d pressed ‘submit’ on [the] grant application,” she said. “I had a minor panic attack.”
Schleider was left with little choice but to wait for the application’s outcome, though.
Mochi appeared to be largely unconcerned, and it turned out that the cat was right not to be afraid.
“This week I learned that I got the grant,” Schleider said. “Her screen obsession finally paid off!”
