Business Groups Balk at “Take Your Cat to Work” Day

CHICAGO. First, notes human resources manager Dale Cloymore, there was “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day,” a well-intentioned effort to show young girls there were future opportunities for them outside the home. “Then the fathers of boys got involved,” he recalls, “saying they didn’t want their sons to grow up to be kept men.”


“Great–I’ll put you down for 100 cases of left-handed skyhooks!”

 

Childless dog-owners were next, saying their inability to have children or their choice not to shouldn’t be held against them. “That was easy–everybody likes dogs,” Cloymore says, “but Bring Your Cat to Work Day is an event we won’t be repeating.”

Bring Your Kid to Work Day was last Thursday and Bring Your Cat to Work Day the day after, but many businesses are still recovering from damage inflicted on furniture and employee morale during what appears will be a short-lived experiment in cat-human relations. “People lose sight of the fact that we’re here to make a profit for our shareholders,” notes Al Klemencz, Chief Operating Officer at Vortices Plastics in suburban Oak Park, “not entertain cats with laser pointers.”

The trouble started for Cloymore when Lisbeth Markwart’s cat “Pookie” was found sleeping atop a printer that was needed to send out a letter to cancel an order. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Lisbeth,” he says, then quickly adds “in a professional workplace phony-smile-in-the-hall kind of way. But she just stood there going ‘Is Ookie Pookie cozy on the nice warm HP 3460?’ Now I’m stuck with 200 metric tons of modeling clay.”


“No one will ever notice!”

 

At Allen, Wembley & Dawson, a downtown law firm that represents the commodities industry, the founding partner’s pride and joy is an antique Persian Shiraz rug that has graced the reception area for fifty years. “That was one of my grandfather’s first fees,” says Clay Wembley III, choking back tears as he views a pile of vomit in which dry cat food is mixed with an oak leaf. “I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to grandmother.”

And at Vortices, a maintenance worker climbs a stepladder in an attempt to lure Kitsy, a spry one-year-old cat, out of the top of a potted Sago Palm tree as her owner, receptionist Melinda Barker stands by. “You don’t know what she means to me,” Barker sobs into a tissue. “She’s all I’ve got since my husband Duane ran off with the babysitter.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

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