Ride the Lightning

Should I Be a Cat on My Next Webinar? The Video That America Can’t Stop Watching

February 11, 2021

So . . . I have three daughters. They all wrote me yesterday to encourage me to start my next webinar with a cat filter.

I probably don't have to explain what they meant because the entire country has had a ball watching one unfortunate (but good humored) lawyer make a virtual court appearance as a cat.

CNN updated the story on February 10 to include some new facts about the incident that captivated the internet yesterday. First of all, if you are one of the few people who has not yet seen the YouTube video, you can find it here.

Attorney Rod Ponton had a virtual court hearing two days ago presided over by Judge Roy B. Ferguson of the 394th Judicial District Court in Texas. A very patient judge indeed. To the participants in the hearing, Ponton looked like a cat.

"Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings," the judge said.

The tearful-looking kitten opened its mouth, but said nothing, as its eyes darted back and forth on the screen.

"Can you hear me, judge?" Ponton asked.

"I'm here, live, I'm not a cat," Ponton said a few seconds later. Those are the words which broke up the entire country. And Ponton was valiantly prepared to go forward as a cat if needed. It was less than a minute before the filter was turned off and Ponton looked like a man rather than a cat. Ponton had no idea how the filter ended up being superimposed on his face. He looked normal as he waited for the hearing to start.

"Somehow, when I got called into court, I miraculously transformed into a cat," he said.

This lasted for about 42 seconds until it was somehow turned off. That time, he said, "seemed like an eternity."

I didn't think this was a Zoom filter as John and I present Zoom training CLEs to lawyers. It also isn't one you can find by searching Snap Camera, which is an application commonly used with Zoom that can add filters (Snap calls them "lenses") around or atop your face during a video chat.

Much of the world was obsessed with finding the source of the filter, which proved to be much older technology. The filter Ponton accidentally used appeared to be from a tool known as Live! Cam Avatar that was used with old Dell webcam software called Dell Webcam Manager. One Twitter user even posted that a similar cat-astrophe (ha, ha!) happened to them during a job interview via Skype years ago.

A YouTube video from 2010 gives a good sense of how it works in non-virtual-courtroom settings.

This makes sense since Ponton was using equipment he thought was about 10 years old. He conducted the meeting on his secretary's old Dell desktop computer at an office in Presidio, Texas (rather than at his main office, which is in Marfa), along with a Dell monitor that has a built-in webcam. His laptop was being used elsewhere at the time, for another meeting.

Ponton has become quite the self-effacing celebrity. I watched him on NBC News yesterday, where even the anchors couldn't keep from laughing out loud.

In grim times, we all needed a bit of comic relief. As we speak on lawyer misadventures and virtual court technology, this incident was a gift from the gods.

And daughters, I may take your advice and make such an appearance for our next webinar. Not as a cat though. That's been done all too splendidly by Mr. Ponton. But there appear to be a wealth of filters to choose from!

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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