Yes, you can--but you will be better off using an event-loop based library like POE or AnyEvent.

jfroebe's suggestion to use POE is on solid ground. There are many libraries for client/server interaction for POE. This sort of task was what lead to POE's development. POE is bit to wrap your head around, but it is powerful and works well. I've written several monitoring scripts that run for months at a time without problems on a Windows XP host.

AnyEvent is newer entry to the world of event loops in Perl. I've seen many positive comments, but have not tried it myself. The POD also links to other event loops.

Coro is another option, it bills itself as "the only real threads in perl". I've never tried it, so I can't give any review.