Did she always know

If you know who this is, then you know what this is:

(If you don't, quick primer: it's the running animated illustration that adorns the fairly popular ChilledCow 24/7 lo-fi hip-hop YouTube livestream, which in some corners has become kind of a short-hand for a certain kind of digital artifact that expresses this very specific cultural moment, which I suppose you can broadly described as the Venn diagram overlap of minimalism, work productivity-mindedness, cultural commodification, and SMOOTH JAZZ. Anyway, read this and this for more context.)

So, whenever I throw this stream up on a background Firefox tab, I used to look at this anime lady and interpret her as a high-school or college student, probably in Japan or Europe or somewhere, studying night and day for an exam that will never get here.

Now I look at her, and it's apparent that she's always been Quarantine Lady, signaling the future that eventually reached us, like some chill AF teen lo-fi hip-hop lovin' Sarah Connor.

What did Quarantine Lady know? Why isn't she telling us straight? What else does she know? How can we find out?

What's the name of the cat?

Anyway, here's the stream, on which I'm more emotionally dependent than ever: