[AstralTraveller (David)]

Years ago someone had an interesting time with a cat during a grazing occultation. Doing grazes involves setting up a number of scopes across the path of the graze. In those pre-GPS days we often observed from suburbia so we could get accurate positions from the topo maps. We used the (now defunct) VNG time signal (on, as I still remember, 4.5, 7.5 and 12MHz) and a tape recorder. The observer would call 'gone' and 'back' as the events occurred.

This night a bloke was observing from a street corner using a 60mm refractor on a small tripod. Being moderately tall he had to bend over to get down to the eyepiece and so was standing with one leg forward and one back and his legs slightly apart. The time had come when the first disappearance was about to happen and he had his eye glued to the eyepiece, when he was visited by a very friendly cat. It was the type that will stretch up, put its front paws on you and dig its claws in. So it proceeded to stretch up the inside of his leg and dig the claws in very close to some very delicate parts of his anatomy .

The tape was priceless. The commentary was something like: "Got the star .... still there ... still there .... ahh ohh *%$#@*!! .. %$@#! cat ..(2 second gap) GONE!... (rest of graze)" Of course we had to ask whether it was the star or something else that was gone . Yes, everything was fine . Oh the trials and tribulations of advancing the cause of science.