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	From:  sdchema!donn
	Date:  May 25 1983
	Subject:  Half Inch Magnetic Tape
	Newsgroups:  net.pets

	I keep a 2400 foot tape in a terrarium at home.  It's very
	docile unless provoked, and easy to feed.  It likes to have
	empty plastic tape spools and old, scarred disk platters to curl
	around while it takes in the sun, but beyond that it isn't too
	demanding to take care of.  It gets along well with the other
	pets, like our four telephones and two modems; they never give
	us any trouble.

	We've sort of been wondering what other people feed their tapes.
	Ours gets a steady diet of house cats and tennis balls, with the
	occasional table lamp for variety.  It's especially fun to feed
	it a cat and watch its digestive processes at work (a tape is
	one of the few pets you can own that actually lets you see its
	food going down).

	We discovered that the trick to feeding our tape is to give it a
	tennis ball as an appetizer, preferably by throwing the tennis
	ball with considerable force into the center of the tape while
	it lies coiled on the living room carpet.  The tennis ball
	enhances the tape's telepathic energy, allowing it to attract a
	nearby house cat with waves of mental force, causing the cat to
	duplicate the tennis ball's plunge into the center of the tape.
	The cat then realizes its ghastly mistake, and it struggles
	violently with the tape; the tape erupts in a tremendous frenzy
	of raking talons and yawning fangs, and starts bouncing across
	the floor in kind of drunken dance.

	Occasionally the cat will squirt free and flash through the
	kitchen like fried lightning, coming to rest atop the piano from
	whence it can direct its baleful glare at the tape now waiting
	patiently on the floor; but eventually the fatal attraction
	overcomes the cat's sense of self-preservation and the furious
	battle is again engaged.  This is the point where the tape may
	inadvertently be attracted to table lamps and other furniture,
	which must be carefully unplugged before the tape hurts itself
	and any innocent bystanders.  The fight can continue for some
	time, but in the end the poor cat will run out of energy and the
	last you see of it is a long furry tail flicking listlessly
	above the pile of tape, like a dilapidated flag of truce.

	At this point the cat will be asleep and the tape will have
	sated itself upon the energy, and may be (carefully) replaced in
	its terrarium.  The cat of course is reusable, and will gain a
	new charge overnight if you throw it outside before going to
	bed.  The tennis ball may have disappeared, in which case you
	should look upstairs behind the clothes dryer (a natural
	hyperspatial accretion and dispersion point).

	I guess my main question is, is so much natural energy healthy
	for a tape?

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