Like Hardware-Store Cats, ALL Felines Need a Job

I apologize. This is going to be an off-topic post because I really can’t think about hardware right now. I’m still pretty upset. (You would be, too.) To think I was so delusional to assume this could never happen to me. That things like this only affected other people.

Wait, let me start from the beginning.

My previous post, Hardware Stores Flaunt Their Cattitude, told the story of feline influencers at hardware stores. In the olden days, store cats were merely expected to keep mice out of the grass seed and bird food. Now, they’re in advertising and marketing campaigns on social media, developing relationships with customers on behalf of store owners. Pretty cool, right?

One loyal Mom & Pop reader—she’s my niece, so by law she must read my work—posted that animal shelters hold adoption events for “working cats” that make great mousers. It’s a way to find homes for cats that would find it difficult to adapt to a home environment.

A organization of shelters in the Newark, N.J., metro area has adoption campaigns for “Career Cats.” I don’t know the difference between a Working Cat and a Career Cat, but this being New Jersey, my guess is that Career Cats root out “Rats,” the name given to companies that employ non-union workers.

I was talking about working cats with my husband, Chuck (a pseudonym BTW), who declared, “It’s about time YOUR CATS became a little more useful around the house. Let’s make them actually work for their preeeeeemium cat food.”

He has a point. I buy this special digestive cat food that’s available only with a prescription, and it costs $76 for a 8.5-pound bag. If you do the math, that’s almost $9 per pound. At the grocery store, there are some cuts of steak that cost the same amount per pound as my cats’ dry food. The dry food is really only for one cat, Jam, but you can’t keep the other cat, Butters, from eating out of the same dish. Hypothetically, I could save money by feeding the cats separately: Jam gets the preeeeeemium food, while Butters gets a bowl of cold gruel.

So why does Jam need this expensive prescription cat food, you ask? Two words: Anal glands.

Now, aren’t you sorry you asked?

Anyway, apparently Jam and Butters overheard Chuck’s idea about them working for their cat food. Then, a funny thing happened. When Mr. Iron Fist was ready to hand out their assignments, both cats disappeared! They weren’t in their usual napping lairs, but admittedly they weren’t too hard to find.

Here’s the upsetting part—what I’ve been working up to all along. In searching for Jam and Butters, Chuck came across this on a low shelf near the litterbox:

I think we both know what this is. Yes, catnip. (The street names are “C-Nip” or just “Nip.”) As it turns out, my cats are addicts! This explains why they laze around the house all day and have the munchies for their preeeeeemium cat food. It also explains why my credit card is missing.

I raised them the best I could, that’s all I can say.