The Cat Lawyer Figured Out His Zoom Settings

Of the many phrases we remember from the pandemic, one stands out: “I’m not a cat.”

The man who uttered it, plaintively, was Rod Ponton, a lawyer who was participating in a virtual civil forfeiture case in Presidio County, Texas, in February 2021. For less than a minute, he was unable to figure out how to turn off the cat filter on his Zoom call. And less than an hour later, it seemed nearly half the internet was sharing in his pain.

“Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings,” the judge said. Mr. Ponton didn’t immediately know how to turn it off and was ready to stay on the call looking like a cat. “I’m prepared to go forward with it,” he said in the video, which was shared widely, and swiftly, online. “I’m here live. I’m not a cat.”

Four years since the mishap, it still brings smiles to people’s faces, Mr. Ponton said in a phone interview. He now gives out business cards with pictures of the cat meme.

“Everybody remembers it,” he said, “and everybody remembers it fondly.”

While it hasn’t exactly changed his life, Mr. Ponton said the moment served as “the world’s best icebreaker at a cocktail party.”

It also taught Mr. Ponton about the speed at which news travels across the internet.

“Within an hour after the actual time it happened, I was getting calls from reporters around the world,” Mr. Ponton said. He received calls and attention regarding it for about six months after it happened, he said, and he appeared on television shows and podcasts.

Reporters don’t tend to call him much about the video anymore, but he said he was happy to talk about it.

“I said it then, and I’ll repeat it now: I’m glad it happened,” Mr. Ponton said. “Because it did let everybody have a moment of humor and a moment of sanity during the dark days of the pandemic. I’m glad it happened, even at my expense.”