Securicat

Eric Morris had 127 hamsters, and each and every one of them was colour blind. Which was a shame, as he had been training them up to be electricians.
You see, Eric spent his days fixing computers for other people, and one day he had the bright idea, that rather than going to the trouble of taking the thing to bits to mend it, he could just pop a trained hamster inside, and it would fix the computer for him. As a result, he spent a lot of time and effort training his animals in all aspects of computer maintenance. Lectures were set. Flow charts produced and examinations taken. After 2 weeks his hamsters understood how all the circuit boards, and cogs and springs and bits of plastic went together, and what all the various bits and pieces did. But whenever Eric put one of his hamsters into a computer, a red wire would be put where a blue wire should go and -Pow!- another computer would explode. Eric would be left with a box of junk to dispose of and a smouldering rodent to bandage up.
And so he found that he was stuck with 127 highly skilled, but slightly damaged hamsters that he had no use for.
He decided to call in at the local computer factory, to see if they could make use of them.

Granny Smith, the hard nosed owner of Fruit Technical Products Inc was not particularly keen on animals. Anything without a USB lead hanging out of the back of it held no interest for her, but once Eric had demonstrated his hamsters in front of her, she saw a business opportunity. She bought 50 of the hamsters from Eric, and sent them of to the nightwatchman in order to train them as industrial spys.
She figured that the hamsters could be infiltrated into the premises of her rival- The Raincoat Computer Co down the road, and with their technical knowledge, the hamsters could bring back information about the new products that her competitor was developing. It may even be possible, she thought, to sack the staff of her own research and development department, and save some money. All they seemed to do down there was goof around and throw paper balls at each other anyway.

The hamsters were duly briefed, and released into the premises of the unsuspecting Raincoat Computer Co. Immediately they scurried about, making notes and memorising circuit boards.
Results quickly noticed. Granny Smith was able to launch new products ahead of her rival. Sales went up, and profits soared.

Eric Morris still had 77 hamsters left in his house. Granny Smith had been too mean to buy more than 50, and he wondered what to do with the rest. He realised that if one computer firm would buy hamsters from him, then it might be possible to sell the rest to another. The following morning, he visited the Raincoat Computer Co and had a meeting with the board of directors.
The management at Raincoat had been wondering why their sales had gone down sharply, and how it was that Granny Smith had been able to launch products that were strikingly similar to the ones they had been developing. They had not connected the recent influx of hamsters running around their factory, with their poor trading performance, until Eric pointed out to them what had been happening.
Consternation abounded.
"Well" said the managing director. "If Granny Smith can use them, so can we" Raincoat bought all of Eric's remaining stock.

Within a short time, parity between the rival firms had been reached. The only difference being that both companys now had additional expenditure for hamster wheels and bags of nuts.

Back at Fruit Technology, Granny Smith noticed that sales and profits had returned to their pre-hamster level. She had also noticed that there seemed to be a lot of hamsters running around the factory, and that she didn't recognise most of them. It dawned on her that her pre-emptive hamster strike on her rival had been reciprocated. She had lost her commercial advantage, and so would have to find a way to get rid of her competitors furry spies. She pulled the yellow pages from her desk draw, and ran her finger down the list of companys that it showed. Her finger stopped at one particular advert. It read:
SECURICAT. ALL YOUR FELINE SECURITY NEEDS ANSWERED.
She picked up the phone, and dialled the number.

Securicat was run by cats for cats. They are the ultimate mercenarys. They would work for however paid them the most. Loyalty and morals are not their stong points, but they were ruthless and professional, and had testimonials from the local farmer, and the man who ran the grain store near the railway.
They drove a hard bargain with Granny Smith. Sure they would rid her of the hamster problem, but it would cost more than the usual saucer of milk. They wanted balls of wool as well!
Granny Smith looked in her purse, and reluctantly agreed.

The cats set to their task with a vengeance. Unsuspecting hamsters found that instead of working their way through a computer, they were working their way through the digestive system of a cat instead. Two weeks after the carnage had begun, the factory was hamster free. Granny Smith was delighted at the results, and promptly sacked all of the cats.
With the supply of milk and balls of wool now denied to them, the cats moved down the road and offered their services to Raincoat Computers. They were taken on, and within two weeks had achieved the same results as before. When they had finished, they were sacked from there as well.

No cats ain't stupid. They may not know much about computers, or tax breaks or profit forecasts, but they are not dumb. They realised that by ridding the two factorys of their rodent problems, they had done themselves out of a job, and saucers of milk don't grow on trees you know.
One night they hatched a plan.
They went out and stole twenty new hamsters from the local pet shop and released them into the computer factorys. These hamsters were not electrical engineers, but that didn't matter. Both companys had lost their trained hamsters and assumed that the ones running aroung their factorys belonged to their rivals.
Phone books were brought out and frantic calls made to Securicat.

This time the cats had a better idea of their value. They demanded not only milk and balls of wool, but fish as well! The companys had no choice. They were terrified of losing their trade secrets, and paid the cats what they asked for.
Securicat moved its swat teams back into the factorys. This time though, they didn't kill the hamsters. Instead they made sure that the hamsters remained visible. They knew that hamsters meant fish.
When the cats were questioned as to why it was taking so long to get rid of the vermin, they would say:
"These are different hamsters" Which was true.
"They are smarter than the last lot" Which was false.
"It's going to take more time. We think that we can control them but not eradicate them totally" Which was true and false.

Things went on like this for some time, but the company accountants were getting restless. Fish isn't cheap, and the cost of buying so much cut deeply into profits.
Granny Smith decided to call in an outside consultant to look at the problem.
So it was that Eric Morris revisited the company that had first bought from him 50 highly skilled, colour blind hamsters.
Using a yard broom and a plastic bucket, Eric caught one of the hamsters and bought it to Granny Smith's office for questioning. It soon became apparent that the hamster did not know the first thing about computers. A second hamster was captured, and under interrogation revealed the scam that the cats had been perpetrating.
When told the news. Granny sit slumped in her chair, and rubbed her chin. She had suspected the that the cats were up to something for sometime. There had been no decrease in the number of hamsters, and her furniture had been scratched as well. Something had to be done.

She took out the phone book, and looked up the number of Securidog.