finances & felines

Although my last post concerned the banking world, I'm going to bring it up again in this post, just because we have added a new member to our staff. He's a black and white, 2-week old kitten. Here's how he joined our ranks:

A week ago, my boss, Big D, surprised us all by entering work with a scrawny, teeny-tiny, rodent-looking kitten - with its umbilical cord still attached. He had found it just outside his shed, a few blocks away from the bank, on a blistering hot August morning...on the concrete. Ouch. And so we did what any office of four women would do -- we nursed it back to health.

It started with a call to the vet and a side trip to pick up a kitty bottle and some kitty formula. I had never heard of kitty formula, but apparently they need it. :) We designated E to take care of him overnight, as she already had 4 cats (what's another when you already have that many?!), and she also had a heating pad and the tender heart to fuss over it throughout the night.

Sure enough, the kittycat joined us at work the next day in an ice cream bucket with a soft and cuddly blanket to snuggle in. The day was spent waiting on customers, but more importantly maintaining a 2-4 hour feeding schedule -- during which everything stopped. If you were a customer, you were lucky you got waited on.

At this point, I mentioned that the kitty really should have some kind of a name...some suggested "Lucky", but that reminded me too much of 101 Dalmations. Then I had an "aha!" moment - I suggested "Moses", since he was "found in the bulrushes of King D's shed", and the name stuck. So today, when it was mentioned that he was possibly a she, my heart sunk. I've grown fond of the name Moses -- in fact, probably one quarter of our bank's customers have now been introduced to Moses and frequently ask how he's doing and ask to hold him or feed him. And they've all had the story of his name explained to them, so to change it now would be traumatic - if not for little Moses, at least for me! So we'll see what happens....but back to the story...

Moses has survived well. He's grown a bit and his eyes are now open -- piercing blue-gray eyes in a tuft of black fur. He's so cute. And I don't even like cats! Although I must admit that it's been entertaining to watch the way E dotes over him....she fusses and fusses, coaxes him to poop (as he was a little constipated at first), rubs his face and belly, feeds him, whispers to him, and is often blessed in return as he piddles down her blouse. Aren't little ones great? :)

So far, Moses has been kept a secret from the other branches of the bank....who knows what would happen if THE BOSS ever found out about it. We'd all be fired for sure, if not for violating the appearance of professionalism, then at least for all the times Moses has piddled on the carpet or stolen sweet E's time in feeding him. Because of this, we probably won't buy him a cute little sweater, nor promote him as our mascot. But as long as we can get away with keeping him in our little ice cream bucket as a secret attraction for our customers, we will.

To be continued....

Correction: Big D was not the one who actually brought Moses into work...it was E...my bad! I guess I wasn't actually there - I was on my lunch break, so forgive me for my ignorance...