Three or Four

Pete Puma is a simple cat.  I am operating with the belief that he still roams the land, but he hasn’t been spotted in a long time, so I’m not certain.  He never could decide how many lumps he wanted.  The massive debate was always between three or four, making it impossible to determine a clear winner.  Three lumps could be just right since it wouldn’t make the tea too sweet, but sometimes too sweet was exactly what was needed.  Then there were the health benefits of using as few lumps as possible.  Everything was a tradeoff, and Pete really just wanted a great cup of tea.  It was always so hard to decide how many lumps it would take to make that happen.  He didn't let the inability to decide bother him. He enjoyed chasing bunnies, drinking tea with three or four lumps, and relaxing after suffering repeated and severe head trauma.

Few know that Pete is a devoted family man with a loving wife, Mary, and two baby Pumas, Pete Jr., and Penelope.  He enjoys taking long strolls at dusk with Mary and snacking on the occasional fowl when the mood hits.  Pete has always been a private puma; he wouldn’t appreciate the information I’ve already disclosed, so please don't re-share this information on any social networks, especially ones that hunters and prey might use.  His family still needs to eat.  He will have a difficult time procuring food for them if his movements become public and predictable.  This is why he keeps his location private on all of his electronic devices.  He will do the same for the GPS tag on his ear as soon as he can get someone to hack it, remove it, or disable it.  Pete isn’t an insane artist, that action refers to tag removal, not his ear.  Until the tag problem is solved, he had agreed to test our Ultimate Signal Protection Head Gear.

There have been two positive developments from Pete's testing.  He no longer experiences severe head trauma when having his tea with three or four lumps as a result of his new "helmet", and his location isn't tracked.  This has allowed Pete and his family to roam unfettered by electronic walls created as a result of a geo-fence built off of his own movements.  Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

There can never be good news without bad news.  At least this isn’t a law of motion in that the bad news must have an equal and opposite impact to the good.  In Pete’s case, it is only bad news for us.  We have lost contact with him because we didn’t realize that we wouldn’t be able to track him once he installed the USPHG.

This setback has destroyed the morale of the test team.  We were anticipating receiving terabytes of data that was going to help us solve Pete’s lump quantity dilemma forever.  It appears that isn’t going to happen now.

We had created a dead drop for Pete to leave us his SD cards so we could download his movement data, but it hasn’t been used in a long time.  Our spotter who is stationed there hasn’t reported seeing Pete or any of his family near the location.

The natural reaction in a situation such as this is to expect the worst.  Pete abandoned his family to join a traveling circus.  The attraction of seeing a three or four lump tea-drinking puma would be hard for a circus aficionado to ignore.

The rationale for that deduction was sound, but the search failed to find a single circus that advertised such an act.  Perhaps Mary tired of caring for Pete after his repeated head traumas and took the kids.  That would be a crime because we know our USPHG had a positive effect on Pete’s brain, and he was showing improvement.  Mary isn’t the kind of puma to abandon her husband the moment that hope had finally appeared.

Local teashops were thought to be a good prospect for locating Pete since he is a tea connoisseur.  Our canvas returned only puzzled looks and a few employees asking us if we were insane.  Evidently none of them had heard about Pete’s fondness for tea.  I thought about checking online shops as well, but Pete’s too cunning to leave an electronic footprint.

The AcMo super computers were reallocated to solving this urgent dilemma.  We had to find Pete and confirm the health and safety of his family.  It is rare for us to tempt drawing the attention of the power company by firing up the whole cluster, but this was more important than the risks.  All of our heavy thinking and number crunching left us with the theory that the Pumas had been the victims of poachers.  Bunnies often fooled Pete, but he knew to be wary of seeking the limelight with the threat of poachers everywhere.  Pete took precautions to maintain a low profile for himself and his family.  They moved from cave to cave and never stayed in the same general area two nights in a row.  They also avoided moving in predictable patterns.  This was good to keep poachers off their trail, but it wreaked havoc on our ability to track them.

It was obvious that their constant movement put a strain on the family’s well being, but it kept them alive.  Mary would often complain about the moves, but she wanted to stay strong for her children.  Sometimes surviving is a small reward worth cherishing.  Speaking of reward, if anyone knows the whereabouts of the Pumas, we are offering an unspecified amount of AcMo dollars to the individual or individuals who provide actionable intel.  More than Pete and his family are at stake; we need to get back our prototype USPHG as soon as possible.

Lab testing has indicated that there is a 29% chance that the unit will begin to accelerate the impact of Pete’s repeated brain traumas.  We need to find him before that happens.  The results are too troubling to even consider at this time.  We promise that we will not stop until we solve the lump quantity dilemma if we find Pete and his family.