MOCHA

This is Mocha. He’s a Ragdoll cat, approximately six years old, and joined the FS HOT household in December 2024 after being given to me by Phil as a Christmas present.

Finding another cat wasn’t straightforward. My previous cat, Delphi, had reached the grand old age of 18 before passing away a couple of years earlier. After that, I spent a considerable amount of time looking for another cat. For various reasons, finding the right one proved surprisingly difficult.

Then, as these things sometimes do, circumstances took an unexpected turn. A man who owned two Ragdolls had decided that he didn’t want to keep both and was looking for a good home for the male. Mocha was subsequently acquired for considerably less than one might expect for a Ragdoll. Which turned out rather well.

It took several months for Mocha’s personality to properly emerge. Initially he was understandably cautious, and it took time, patience and a fair amount of interaction to establish some trust.

Once that happened, however, there was no going back. Mocha is quite possibly the most affectionate and loving cat I’ve ever known. He is family.

Given the opportunity, he will sit beside me, climb onto my lap and eventually fall asleep there. He has developed an impressive ability to appear whenever I’m sitting down, particularly if I’m attempting to work.

Consequently, almost everything I produce for FS HOT these days has been produced with Mocha somewhere nearby. He has become part of the environment — part inspiration, part distraction, part quality-control department.

He provides plenty of material for photographs and artwork, contributes considerably to the general sense of fun around FS HOT and, whether he knows it or not, has become integral to the site.

There is also a useful lesson here. Not everything needs to be engineered. Sometimes you search for something for months, find nothing, and then circumstances put the right thing in front of you completely by accident.

In Mocha’s case, it resulted in a cat. In FS HOT’s case, it resulted in a surprisingly effective Chief Morale Officer with blue eyes and an almost complete disregard for deadlines.

Mocha is part of the FS HOT crew — read the full story of the site itself on About FS HOT, meet the founder on Deakster’s page, or head back to fshot.org for the current tools and utilities.