The Writers' Circle

Eric Morris had 127 hampsters, and each and every one of them was colour blind. Which was a shame, as he had been training them to be electricians.
You see Eric spent his days fixing computers for people, and one day he had the neat idea, that rather than going to the trouble of taking the thing to bits to mend it, he could just pop a trained hampster inside, and it would fix the computer for him. He had spent weeks training his small furry pets. They understood how all the circuit boards, and cogs and springs and bits of plastic went together, and what they all did. But whenever Eric put one of his hampsters into a computer, a red wire would be put where a blue wire should go and -Pow!- another computer wouyld explode, and Eric would be left with a smoldering rodent to bandage up, and so he was stuck with 127 highly skilled but slightly damaged hampsters that he had no use for. He decided to call in a 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 particulaly keen on animals. Anything without a USB lead hanging out of the back of it was of no interest to her, but her sharp business brain saw an opportunity. She bought fifty of the hampsters from Eric, and sent them to the nightwatchman to train them as industrial spys. She figured that the hampsters could be infiltrated into the premises of her rival- The Raincoat Computer Co down the road, and with their technical knowledge. The hampsters 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 hampsters were duly briefed, and releashed onto the unsuspecting Raincoat Computer Co.
Results began to be noticed straight away. Granny Smith was able to launch new products ahead of her rival. Sales went up and profits soared.

Eric Morris still had 77 hampsters, 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 hampsters from him, then it might be possible to sell the rest to another. As a result, he visited the Raincoat Computer Co and spoke with the chief executive. 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 hampsters running aroung their factory, with their poor trading performance, until Eric pointed out to them the remarkable qualities of the little animals. If Granny Smith could use them, then so could they. Raincoat bought all of Erics remaining stock.

Within a short time, parity between the rival firms had been reached. The only difference being that both companys had additional expenditure than before for hamster wheels and bags of nuts.
Granny Smith noticed after a while that sales and profits had returned to their pre-hampster level. She had also noticed that there seemed to be a lot of hampsters running around the factory, and that she didn't recognise most of them. It dawned on her that her pre-emptive hampster strike on her rival had been recipricated. She would have to find a way to get rid of Raincoat's furry spies. She pulled the yellow pages from her desk drawer, 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 dialed the number.

Sucuricat was run by cats, for cats. They are the ultimate mercenarys. They would work for whoever paid them the most. Loyalty and morals are not their strong points. 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 reluctantly agreed, and the cats set to their task with a vengence. Unsuspecting hampsters 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 started, the factory was hampster free. Granny Smith was delighted with the result, 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.

Now cats ain't stupid. They may not know much about computers, or tax breaks or profit forcasts, 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. 
One night they hatched a plan. 
They went out and stole twenty new hampsters from the local pet shop and releashed the into the computer factorys. These hampsters were not electrical engineers, but that didn't matter. Both companys have lost their trained hampsters, and assumed that the ones running around their factorys belonged to their rivals.
Phone books were brought out of desks, and calls placed to Securicat.

This time, the cats had a better idea of their worth. They demanded not only milk and balls of wool, but fish as well! The computer companys had no choise. They were terrified of losing their trade secrets, and paid the cats what they asked for.
The cats didn't kill the hampsters, they made sure that the hampsters remained visable so as to guard their jobs. When the cats were questioned as to why it was taking so long to rid the factorys of the vermin, they would say
 "These are different hampsters" which was true. 
"They are smarter than the last lot" Which was false
"It's goingto take more time. We think that we can control them, but not eradicate them completly" Which was true and false.

Things went on like this for some time, but the company accountants were getting restless. Fish isn't cheap you know, 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 hampster spys from him. Using a plastic bucket, Eric caught one of the hampsters and brought it to Granny Smith's office for questioning. It soon became apparant that the hampster did not know the first thing about computers. Asecond hampster was captured, and under interrigation revealed the scam that the cats had been purpitrating.
Granny Smith rubbed her chin. She had, had her suspisions about the cats for some time. There had been no decrease in the number of hampsters, and her furniture had been scratched as well.

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