My Cat's Doorman

Unemployment log:  Entry date 20130301  Location, On Door Duty

Awhile back I caved to William's ongoing campaign to get a pet. He really wanted a dog, and to be honest so did I.  But Jeff will not budge on his No Dogs law.  Instead, I cruised Craigslist until I found a local family that had some kittens for sale.  The family had moved earlier in the summer and a pregnant stray cat had decided to move with them.  The vet said the kittens where healthy and flea free so a little grey fluff ball came home with me.  William was instantly in love.

Who couldn't love that face?

When I was a kid my family had a variety of dogs, cats and rabbits.  With the occasional bird thrown into the mix. We lived way, way outside city limits so neighbors who kept chickens, geese, cows and peacocks weren't out of the ordinary. 
I think it was the first year my mom planted her garden when the cows across the back field got loose. One of them developed a taste for whatever my mom was trying to grow. Probably strawberries because I that's what I was always sneaking into the garden to get. After the third or fourth time my mom came home to find this cow standing in her garden munching away, she exchanged some harsh words with the runaway cow's owner.  We didn't see the cow for the rest of that summer.  Then, in the early fall we came home to find a huge cooler on our door step with a note that said, Sorry for Tess eating your garden.  Since you fed her I think it's only fair that she feed you.  Enjoy.

My mom was over the moon.  Half a cow, in neatly wrapped packages of butchers paper.  She was a single mom on a budget, this was like hitting the lottery. I was horrified. Not that the cow I had come to know and like had been killed but that her name was Tess. None of the animals I had ever known up to that point had had a "human" moniker.  And to have mine?  It was more than my six year old brain could take. Since then I have met many a pet named Tess and I have mostly gotten over it. It is hard though when your best friends open their back door and entice their elderly Pomeranian to go outside by saying, "Come on Tess.  Good girl, wanna go outside? Come on Tessie, let's go outside and go tinkle."

William was in charge of naming the new kitten. He doesn't know how he came up with Shamrock but that's the name that stuck.  When she was still little and would come tearing into his bedroom chasing a toy he would yell, "Sham-Rock-In-The-House!"



Shamrock, giving her vocal chords a rest.

Now our little bundle of kitten fluff has grown tall enough to reach my chopping board and fling bits of onion or carrot on to the floor. And her once cute little kitten cries now sound like a yodeling duck. Shamrock is VERY vocal. She is the feline equivalent of Jon. Pretty much equal amounts of hair too.

 

We've all become accustomed to her yowling for breakfast at 6:30 am. Then yowling to be let out at 6:45 am. Things are pretty quiet for awhile after that. Shamrock patrols the bamboo and has run a cat trail diagonally across the side yard to the front porch.  Then around 8 am she'll sit outside the back door and yowl until I let her in. I spend the rest of the day opening and closing the back door for her. Out, then In and back out again. At least a dozen times a day.

 

 I have tried wearing headphones around the house to block out her duck yodeling yowls but they don't work. Even when she's outside I can hear her. Yesterday our neighbor across the street, who is deaf by the way, called me to ask if I would kindly let the cat in. I said I had no idea what he was talking about.

"You can't hear your cat outside?" He asked me.

"Nope. Not a thing."

"She sounds like a yodeling duck. I can't hear The Price Is Right."

I told him to turn down his hearing aids if she bothered him.  He didn't like my suggestion. So I let her in.

 

Jeff laughed his ass off when I complained about her last night.  "I don't know what she did during the day while we were both at work. Did she just sit at the door and yowl for 8 hours?" I asked him.  He gave me is squinty eyed, one eyebrow in the air, look and said, "No.  She probably just slept all day. But she sure has you trained now to jump at her every command." I hate it when he's right. I am now a cat doorman.  I've put it on my resume.

 

   Accomplished professional in project development and execution. Skilled communicator able to operate in a fast paced environment with minimal supervision. Current Notary Public in Washington State and member of the Puget Sound chapter of the Project Management Institute. Ably trained feline doorman.

 

If you hear of any openings please let me know.