Texas lawyer, trapped by cat filter on Zoom call, informs judge he is not a cat
The coronavirus has been responsible for a series of video-call stumbles and mishaps, and the phenomenon seemingly reached its zenith this week, when a Texas lawyer appeared before a judge as a cat, after being unable to change a video filter.
“I’m not a cat,” Rod Ponton was forced to clarify during a hearing in Presidio county, south-west Texas, as he and his assistant scrambled to remove the filter.
The filter, which displayed a kitten instead of Ponton’s face, was able to capture the lawyer’s horror and confusion, its eyes flitting across the screen as Ponton scrambled to remove it.
The coronavirus has prompted many computer mishaps, as many of the world’s workers adapt to working from home in the face of the pandemic. They have ranged from the inadvertently hilarious to the career-ending.
Faced with hearing legal debate from a kitten, Judge Roy Ferguson of Texas’s 394th judicial district told Ponton: “I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings. You might want to …”
The Ponton/kitten entity then interrupts Ferguson in a panicked drawl: “Can you hear me, judge?”
Ferguson responds: “I can hear you. I think it’s a filter …”
“It is,” the cat-faced Ponton responds. “And I don’t know how to remove it. I’ve got my assistant here, she’s trying to, but I’m prepared to go forward with it … I’m here live. I’m not a cat.”
Ferguson deadpans: “I can see that.”
Ponton was representing the state of Texas in the hearing, which reportedly centered on a person who had attempted to leave the US with contraband and illegally-obtained cash. Presidio county is on the US-Mexico border and includes the town of Marfa and much of Big Bend national park.
In an interview with the New York Times, Ponton said he was using his secretary’s computer during the incident. Ponton told the newspaper he was “mortified”, although he appeared to see the funny side.
“If I can make the country chuckle for a moment in these difficult times they’re going through, I’m happy to let them do that at my expense,” Ponton said.
Ponton’s accidental morphing into a wide-eyed baby cat is not the first pandemic-inspired video call mishap – and likely won’t be the last.
Thousands of people have shared instances of Zoom meetings gone wrong over the past 12 months, with incidents including a boss turning herself into a potato and family members walking around in various states of undress.
In January a BBC News segment raised eyebrows as viewers spotted a large pink penis sculpture on a shelf behind the interview subject, while last year a New Jersey school board member was forced to resign after she accidentally broadcast her visit to the toilet during a meeting.
A troubling incident came in October, when the journalist and TV analyst Jeffrey Toobin was suspended after he was allegedly caught masturbating during a Zoom call.
The Texas cat clip now seems destined to achieve viral immortality of its own, a mission helped by Judge Ferguson himself, who tweeted a link to the video on Tuesday.
“If a child used your computer, before you join a virtual hearing check the ‘Zoom video options’ to be sure filters are off,” Ferguson wrote.
“These fun moments are a byproduct of the legal profession’s dedication to ensuring that the justice system continues to function in these tough times. Everyone involved handled it with dignity, and the filtered lawyer showed incredible grace. True professionalism all around!”
The cat video provided a moment of levity in a bleak period, but in a symbol of our turbulent, take-nothing-for-granted times it was subsequently revealed that Ponton has something of a past, and was accused in 2014 of involvement in a heavy-handed raid on a smoke shop run by a former lover.
