“I discovered that she’d pressed ‘submit’ … I had a minor panic attack.”
Mochi, a curious cat with prying paws and an obsession with flashy computer and TV screens, resulted in a very happy accident for her human, Jessica Schleider.
Mochi has loved putting herself in between Schleider and her work from the very beginning.
The cat was discovered as a stray inside a UPS truck with two of her kittens and was adopted by Schleider and her partner while they were still in graduate school.
“She was captivated by my laptop from the beginning,” Schleider told us. “I believe she visited multiple websites during this particular nap.”
Now that Schleider is an assistant professor of psychology at Stony Brook University, where she focuses on mental health research, much of her work is appealing for funds to ensure she can conduct the necessary study.
That’s exactly what Schleider was doing when she decided to take a vacation recently. She wanted to make sure she’d dotted all the proverbial ‘i’s before submitting the application because the grant she was applying for was particularly important — it was worth $100,000.
“I was working from home and decided to take our dog, Penny, for a walk before ‘taking the plunge,'” she explained.
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.”
But there was nothing Schleider could do but wait for the application’s results.
Mochi appeared unconcerned, and as it turned out, the cat was correct not to be concerned.
“This week I learned that I got the grant,” Schleider said. “Her screen obsession finally paid off!”
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