My cell phone rang at two minutes of four in the morning. I swiped my thumb across the green ‘answer\u2019 button, put the phone to my ear and grunted.
\n\u201cMeow?\u201d came the reply. It was my cat.
\n\u201cWaffles?\u201d I cleared my throat and sat up. I hadn\u2019t heard from my cat in two months.
\n\u201cMeow.\u201d She sounded sad and exhausted and I could guess why. She\u2019d gotten herself a job and apparently she was\u2014predictably\u2014in over her head.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re not going to try to tough it out?\u201d It was kind of cruel of me to string her along. We both knew she couldn\u2019t handle this.
\n\u201cMeow.\u201d It was a long, drawn out meow. Almost like back in the days when she still lived with me and her food bowl wasn\u2019t entirely full and she desperately needed me to cover the entire bottom of the dish with kibble.
\n\u201cOkay, okay. I\u2019ll be there by tomorrow.\u201d I hung up. I hadn\u2019t said \u2018I told you so.\u2019
\n***
\nThe next morning I was annoyed with Waffles. I had told her that this \u2018job\u2019 scheme of hers was ill-conceived and would never work. She was a cat. What sort of cat gets a job? Apparently Waffles. The temp agency that placed her didn\u2019t seem to care that she was a cat.
\nAnyways, I was annoyed. But I was also impressed. I was impressed that Waffles had not only been able to dial the phone\u2014including the 1 + area code, since she\u2019d moved far away from our Kansas City home to Kentucky for the job\u2014but also that she had learned my phone number and remembered it. Perhaps it hadn\u2019t been so far-fetched that she could do some sort of useful work. It was more than I\u2019d expected her capable of.
\nI packed my bag for a three day stay and hit the road to go bail her out. Again. Two days off work. Several tanks of gas. Waffles had always been a screw up. When she was an older kitten, she ran out the door once before I could stop her. She knew she wasn\u2019t allowed out, but she was defiant. When she finally came back two weeks later she was, predictably, pregnant.
\nIrresponsible. I had the vet fix her, remove the whole uterus\u2014kittens and all\u2014before she could deliver the litter. Jesus. The pet population was already out of control and the world didn\u2019t need four to six more mini Waffleses out killing birds, or getting into trash cans, or living off of human charity. Someone had to be responsible. I guess it had to be me.
\nShe got weird after that. She kept licking Shep the dog, or trying to pick him up by the scruff of the neck. That was ridiculous because Shep is a border collie and at least three times as big as Waffles. When I caught her teaching him to use the litter box, I had to put my foot down.
\n\u201cOh.\u201d I said. \u201cDid you want Kittens? Well. You can\u2019t support kittens.\u201d She looked defiant. \u201cGet over it and leave the dog alone.\u201d
\n\u201cMeow.\u201d She had said back.
\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t like it, you\u2019re welcome to go find a job.\u201d I had thought that was the end of it. She acted pretty much like a cat for a whole year after that. Then one day two months ago the taxi came.
\n\u201cI\u2019m here for Ms. Waffles,\u201d the driver had said.
\n\u201cWhat on earth?\u201d I had asked
\n\u201cMeow.\u201d I looked down. Waffles was sitting on a piece of letterhead. She purred and trilled at the man and leapt into his arms.
\nI picked up the letterhead. It was a job offer from Dixie paper products. Waffles had been officially hired as a clerk at a distribution center in Kentucky. My cat had been deemed competent enough to fill orders for those little salt and pepper packets that fast food chains hand out.
\n\u201cWhat the hell?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cI\u2019m just here to pick up Ms. Waffles and her belongings,\u201d said the driver.
\n\u201cMeow.\u201d Said Waffles.
\nI said a few more things: \u201cYou\u2019ll come crawling back. This will never work. You\u2019re nothing but a born freeloader. You\u2019re insane if you think you can do any job\u2014even a stupid job like this one.\u201d These were all true things, but as I said them, the driver looked at me like I was an asshole.
\nThat was two months ago. Now, after a really long day of travel, I am pulling into the parking lot of my cat\u2019s workplace. The building was a small, nondescript brown rectangle with a plastic banner that said \u201cDixie\u201d draped above the entrance. Not a permanent location, it seemed.
\nI wondered vaguely as I approached the receptionist how Waffles even got to work each day. Where she lived. How she cashed her paychecks, or had she opened a bank account and set up direct deposit?
\n\u201cI am here for Waffles,\u201d I said.
\nThe receptionist stared blankly for a fraction of a second as if I\u2019d ordered breakfast. Then she said, \u201cOh! Ms. Waffles\u2019 office is the third door on the right.\u201d She pointed down a hallway.
\n\u201cMs. Waffles.\u201d I scoffed and the receptionist blushed and looked away as if I\u2019d said something rude.
\nI opened the door without knocking and found Waffles sitting miserably on her desk amidst a pile of incomplete paperwork. The phone was still off the hook from last night\u2019s phone call and it was making the \u2018ah-ah-ah-ah\u2019 sound that corded phones make when left off the hook too long. Hilariously, there was that poster on the wall with the dangling kitten that said, \u201cHang in there.\u201d
\n\u201cMeow.\u201d She looked up at me, helpless, frazzled, overwhelmed and relieved that I was there to fix it all. I felt bad for her. She looked really stressed out.
\n\u201cI told you so.\u201d I hadn\u2019t mean to say it, but I didn\u2019t want her to pull something like this again. Waffles\u2019 head dropped.
\nI spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out her paperwork and returning her dozens of unanswered phone calls. The last thing I did was type up a letter of resignation. I presented Waffles with an ink pad. She flattened her ears and swished her tail at the letter.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re just a cat,\u201d I said gently. \u201cYou\u2019re not responsible. You need someone to take care of you, and I think you know that.\u201d Her tail went still and she pressed her paw to the ink pad and then to the bottom of the letter.
\nI carried Waffles out and deposited her in the front seat of my car. \u201cWe\u2019re going home where you belong,\u201d I said.
\nWaffles curled up with her tail underneath her and stared with sad, half-closed eyes at a spot on the car seat. She stayed like that for hours on the long road back to Kansas City.
\nEven if you are right, and you know that you are right and are doing the right thing, there are times that cats can\u2014without speaking or ticking an ear in your direction\u2014make you come to know that you are an asshole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My cell phone rang at two minutes of four in the morning. I swiped my thumb across the green ‘answer\u2019 button, put the phone to my ear and grunted. \u201cMeow?\u201d came the reply. It was my cat. \u201cWaffles?\u201d I cleared my throat and sat up. I hadn\u2019t heard from my cat in two months. \u201cMeow.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[152,383,422],"class_list":["post-9757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-cat","tag-family","tag-flash-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}