Caterwauling

I ran into a pair of kiddos at Pet Supermarket yesterday. As I do.

One reminded me of Cocoa. Bright eyes, playful. Gray and brown striped tabby. Danced the way Cocoa does when she wants me to wake up.

The other had the same coloring. But its eyes were crossed. One eye was a little swollen.

When I looked in the cage by the register, the first one bounded into the action. Look at us! Look how cute we are! Take us home please! Me and my twin here, c’mon you know you wanna!

The second looked sad. Like, hi, I’m here too. Hope you could love me but I’d understand if you can’t.

I did what I always do. I told them I loved them. I hoped they’d get a nice house and a good family. And that they’d get to go together.

This particular store always seems to sell one and not the other. But I’m holding onto hope.

I told mom about this pair, how I wish I could have taken them.

She had eye surgeries as a kid. I bet she would have fallen in love with the calmer kitty. How that calm kitty would love Cocoa and Bella. How Magic needs another kitten to be crazy with.

I look at my 3 bebes, who spent all afternoon with me as I caught up on work. I always think of how I want them with me forever.

Cocoa’s little legs, man.

But every time I tell myself my heart will shatter without my babies, I meet another baby who needs a momma.

Speaking of, I need to go see my downstairs babies. I call them Kadie Jr., Cocoa Jr. and Nutmeg Jr. After babies I’ve loved (Kates and Nut) and still do (Cokie).

Who knew my greatest loves would all have tails?

I accepted a job offer at the end of 2019 under duress.

The what and the who of it all that made me say yes to that mess was inconsequential. (God I love that word.)

The important thing was, I was leaving an annoying person …

But all I really did was exchange them for another crackpot.

Who just showed up in my damn inbox again.

Yesterday, I got this weird email about reiki. Whoever wrote it included some OAN-type of clip about how it rouses the demons out of your body to unleash hell on the world.

Now, I get opted into all kinds of crazy Christian wingnut financial pubs all the time. As ever, I scrolled to the bottom to see who the lucky “unsubscribe” recipient would be today.

UGH, SJ.

OK, so when I joined the new entity, I was introduced to this cool lady who read tarot cards and published guides on manifesting your wildest dreams. Like, she even used tarot and intuition to help her trade stocks!

I thought it was going to be a friendship made in heaven.

Well … she would soon undergo some sort of wacko religious experience.

At first, it was that she embraced tRumpism full stop. She ran for office in her (luckily faraway) state and lost bigly.

Then, George Floyd got murdered on my birthday. And she couldn’t stop bringing it up in meetings. Which, as her superior, I deflected until I’d had enough of her.

She kept talking about the “riots” and I said they are peaceful protests till some brat with a big gun crosses state lines to kill protestors.

She said, well Dawn, you can go riot all you want. But if you go to D.C. and deface the Thomas Jefferson statue, I will drive down there and shoot you myself.

THIS WAS ON A CALL THAT HALF THE COMPANY HEARD.

She later Skyped me to apologize for threatening to kill me.

When I returned my laptop post-shitcanning, I made that screenshot the desktop image.

Anyway, her little tarot/manifestation newsletter started to document this religious awakening she was having.

I stayed on the mailing list, as I got no problem with God. (His followers, OTOH …)

Increasingly, she started repenting about getting mixed up in the “dark arts” and believing in gods and goddesses when there was Only One.

Then she went silent. And honestly I forgot about her.

Then the email filled with “proof” of reiki rousing sleeping demons did me in.

I simply unsubscribed. After all, I can’t imagine she has amassed any traction on the internet. What, one spam complaint is gonna set her straight? Please.

I type all of this to reiterate something I’ve typed about in this space a thousand times before. Trading bad for bad.

Like, you want to escape something at one place … well guess what, you get something equally annoying at the next.

So when I sit here today and dent my forehead after hanging up from (now three) annoying people, I think, hey! None of them THREATENED MY LIFE today.

I mean, they might have made me want to end it all at some point. But every meeting and project eventually concludes. And I get to go back to my cool, awesome team after each one.

And the inconsuhkwential ones never stop being just that.