It seemed like the easiest job I would ever have, easier than the time Japanese businessmen paid me to dress as a dolphin and kick them in the balls. Essentially, it came down to this: customers purchase an app for their phone which, after completing a questionnaire, allows them to receive text messages from their cats. The questions they answer provide a sense of the cat’s personality. Employees like me utilize that information to fashion responses which seem like something the cat might say. It sounds ridiculous because it is, but I know a guy who made a million bucks selling an app that interpreted stomach noises, suggesting foods the stomach wanted based on the sounds.
And given the fact the company, Feline Friends, paid a solid, albeit low, salary, I saw no reason to turn down a job that allowed me to work from home… ninety percent of the time mindlessly watching TV.
Glance over kitty’s personality, seeing he tends to smack things off tables, I text: “Hey. Sandra. That coffee mug. It’s going on the ground.”
To which Sandra replies, “Don’t you do it Khal.”
“Oh I’m doing it.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“It’s done.”
“Goddamn it.”
“I luv u ;) !”
“… I love you too.”
Most meow-messages™ went somewhere along those lines, a playful antagonism, or a sweet stupidity that bordered on manipulative. However, I can’t pretend I didn’t send texts for my own entertainment.
“Pet my belly. I won’t be a bear trap.”
“Okay,” a minute passes, “You bit me!”
“Those love nips. You like it.”
It’s amazing how much abuse people will take from a beloved kitty. The way aloofness of cats makes it seem like whatever affection they give is an accomplishment, a kind of earned love owners feel immense gratitude receiving.
Knowing customers expected a degree of mistreatment I reacted accordingly.
“Hi Mittens! Today at work I got a raise.”
“Does this means better foods?”
“Maaaaybe.”
“Maybe no yez.”
“Sure! Yeah you get better nibbles.”
“Good. Now feedz me, or I eatz u.”
And during this exchange I’m actually imagining myself as the cat contemplating eating the owner. With a look of bored indifference I don’t give a shit this woman got a raise. I’m hungry, I want food – better food; I will eat you ya pink giant slave. Now bring me the kitty warmer you call laptop. I wish to lounge.
This may seem like great exercise for the imagination. However, it led to some strange personal behavior. Sitting in a bar one night I’m replying to a meow-message™, and absentmindedly I start slowing pushing a pint closer to the edge of the table… closer… until it falls off. It shattered on the ground drawing all eyes to me. I slow blinked, and walked out calmly.
That said, my only bone of contention revolved around the fact I technically needed to be ready to send messages 24/7. Asleep in bed I hear the cheery meow signaling a message from a client. Flopping over, half awake, I find a text asking why Catty Perry is shooting around the apartment like a pinball at top speed at 3 in the goddamn morning.
Reply: “I haz duh spooks.”
“Yeah, but why?”
As if I actually know the answer I text back, “Cuz ghosts!”
But things didn’t get strange until I got assigned to Linda. So let’s meet her.
Linda is a 42 year old efficiency expert. She’s the person companies hire in order to find the fat they want to trim. As such she tends to stay in, primarily because one night at a Tiki bar she got knocked unconscious with a coconut by someone whom her efficiency report got laid off. About two years ago, in order to feel less lonely, she adopted a cat. She tried online dating, but somehow she kept getting matched with people who got fired because of her.
I know all this because Linda thoroughly filled out her questionnaire. For instance, I know that at the age of nine she briefly owned a cat named Ruffles, but had to give him up because her sister turned out to be allergic, said loss becoming a subconscious irritant that’s always prevented the two from ever getting along. As I said, she filled it out thoroughly.
Her current kitty is a young Abyssinian named Raffles. Raffles enjoys sniffing sushi, playing with felt butterflies, and music by The Isley Brothers, especially the song “Just Came Here to Chill” off the album Baby Makin’ Music. Linda describes his personality as a cross between Leslie Knope, and Abelard, a castrated monk who lived 900 years ago whose love letters to the nun Heloise inspired Linda’s first erotic fantasies… thorough.
Armed with this in-depth report I sent Linda her first meow-message™ from Raffles:
“Sup?”
Three hours later she replied, “Hi.”
This is not uncommon. There is an understandable hesitance at times. For instance, it takes a mental leap to have a conversation with a cat through text messages, while watching said kitty clearly not text you. Most of my clients seemed remarkably at ease with such a leap. However, on occasion some folks needed to be coaxed into things.
“Hello.”
“Raffles?”
“Is there another cat?”
“No.”
“Then it’s me, Raffles.”
“What are you doing right now?”
A quick check of my notes, “Sleeping on that clock."
A moment later, “Yeah you are. How are you feeling?”
Hooked. Sure, I guessed, but making the right call pulled her into the fantasy.
Over the next several weeks Linda became one of my most regular clients. We exchanged messages constantly, a definite plus for me because I got a bonus for every one hundred I sent. Linda averaged 300 a week guaranteeing me an extra fifty bucks every month. But it was easy to talk to her. Unlike other clients I didn’t need to do any of the cutesy misspelled bullshit. I could message her like a real human being. That should’ve been a warning sign. Most people don’t want their pet to be their intellectual equal. Other conversational elements involved possible implications only retrospect could reveal.
Linda: “Being vulnerable is an unpleasant feeling.”
Raffles: “Well, you’re safe when I’m around.”
Linda: “You always know just what to say.”
Or more obviously that time she texted:
“I like this dress.”
“I’ll be sure not to get fur on it.”
“Well, then I’d just have to take it off.”
We talked for hours. She told me about her love of crepes, and how in high school she got detention for criticizing a teacher’s inefficient way of writing on the chalkboard. She confessed to loving her mother more than her father, and I told her I sometimes felt the same, then we joked how I was stray, I never knew them – “Oh silly Raffles.” Though we both agreed, if I were a Dickensian kitten, that would be the case, abandoned by daddy not mum. Connected by texts we went shopping together, waited for an oil change to finish, and all around killed time. I actually found myself looking forward to our conversations.
Everything came to a head a few days ago. I’m on the couch watching The House that Dripped Blood (1971), sitting there in a bathrobe and boxers, eating cereal out of a pint glass when Linda texts me.
She writes, “I got some wine.”
I reply, “Are we having a party?”
“Party for two.”
“Me and you?”
“Yep.”
“Sounds delightful. What’s the occasion?”
She replies, “There isn’t one per say, but we could make one.”
She then sent me a picture I can only describe as a fit 42 year old woman dressed in blue lingerie holding an Abyssinian. I then consulted the PDF training manual regarding this specific type of situation. Though employees of Feline Friends aren’t supposed to request sexting there is no outright prohibition if the client initiates it. Some people really love their cats. I read that section three times to be sure. However, despite no apparent ramifications I started to have doubts. It didn’t feel right. So I looked at the picture again.
I looked at her face, zoomed in on it. There’s no one mask to define desperation, but if there was it would’ve been Linda’s face. Her eyes begging. The photo erased my image of her as a crazy cat lady, replacing it with someone so desperate for human connection, yet so unable to find any she reached out into the void, grasping at this fantasy role playing as a means to indirectly connect with another person. She never thought of me as Raffles, the voice of her cat, she thought of me as a person, a human being. That’s what she wanted. And here, now, knowing nothing about me, she took another risk to fill another missing part of her life; imagine her standing there in her bedroom nervously sipping a glass of wine while waiting anxiously, heart thudding in her chest, not sure if she’s going to be humiliated, she’s out on a limb that might break at any moment, every passing second increasing the terror that another person is about to say no, you are unwanted; standing there naked in so many ways – it’s heart breaking.
Of course, that could just be me rationalizing what happened next…
I texted, “I like blue.”
“Me too.”
I told her not to send me anymore pics just give me the details. She agreed. Endeavoring to be professional I stood under an arctic torrent in the shower. She sexted awkwardly at first, by which I mean the fumbling steps of someone unfamiliar with how to proceed. However, it didn’t take long before she went into the kind of poetic details only someone sexually starved will use. Those used to regular sex use blunt terminology because they haven’t had time to over think the “steady oily trickle building to a flow, a flood” as a silver vibrator hums against “quivering labia” before being “muffled, swallowed whole, sending shivers” throughout a woman “melting with pleasure.” The rosy flush that came to her vaginal lips, the almost painful stiffening of her nipples, fingers circling the outside of her wet hole gushing juice down to her asshole – blue skinned from the icy shower I still managed to join in the moment.
In a way it felt wrong not to. Someone being that erotically open and intimate deserves a kind of reciprocation. Also, I’d’ve never been able to honestly reply to her question, “Was it good for you?”
“It was great for me.”
She texted, “I’m going to get more wine.”
“Good idea.”
A few minutes passed while she struggled to think of what to say, contemplating what’d just happened perhaps inspiring her to text, “Then I think I’m going to bed.”
“I might do the same.” At least to wrap myself in warm blankets before my hands broke off.
“Good night.”
I echoed, “Good night.”
“It was a good night?”
“The best.”
And I meant it, though immediately afterward I went to the freezer, cracked open a bottle of vodka, and aimed for black out. Not knowing what to feel I didn’t want to feel anything. Sometimes that’s easier. In the morning I found out Linda quit Feline Friends. That made things easier for me.
I emailed the head of HR, “I quit.”
And given the fact the company, Feline Friends, paid a solid, albeit low, salary, I saw no reason to turn down a job that allowed me to work from home… ninety percent of the time mindlessly watching TV.
Glance over kitty’s personality, seeing he tends to smack things off tables, I text: “Hey. Sandra. That coffee mug. It’s going on the ground.”
To which Sandra replies, “Don’t you do it Khal.”
“Oh I’m doing it.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“It’s done.”
“Goddamn it.”
“I luv u ;) !”
“… I love you too.”
Most meow-messages™ went somewhere along those lines, a playful antagonism, or a sweet stupidity that bordered on manipulative. However, I can’t pretend I didn’t send texts for my own entertainment.
“Pet my belly. I won’t be a bear trap.”
“Okay,” a minute passes, “You bit me!”
“Those love nips. You like it.”
It’s amazing how much abuse people will take from a beloved kitty. The way aloofness of cats makes it seem like whatever affection they give is an accomplishment, a kind of earned love owners feel immense gratitude receiving.
Knowing customers expected a degree of mistreatment I reacted accordingly.
“Hi Mittens! Today at work I got a raise.”
“Does this means better foods?”
“Maaaaybe.”
“Maybe no yez.”
“Sure! Yeah you get better nibbles.”
“Good. Now feedz me, or I eatz u.”
And during this exchange I’m actually imagining myself as the cat contemplating eating the owner. With a look of bored indifference I don’t give a shit this woman got a raise. I’m hungry, I want food – better food; I will eat you ya pink giant slave. Now bring me the kitty warmer you call laptop. I wish to lounge.
This may seem like great exercise for the imagination. However, it led to some strange personal behavior. Sitting in a bar one night I’m replying to a meow-message™, and absentmindedly I start slowing pushing a pint closer to the edge of the table… closer… until it falls off. It shattered on the ground drawing all eyes to me. I slow blinked, and walked out calmly.
That said, my only bone of contention revolved around the fact I technically needed to be ready to send messages 24/7. Asleep in bed I hear the cheery meow signaling a message from a client. Flopping over, half awake, I find a text asking why Catty Perry is shooting around the apartment like a pinball at top speed at 3 in the goddamn morning.
Reply: “I haz duh spooks.”
“Yeah, but why?”
As if I actually know the answer I text back, “Cuz ghosts!”
But things didn’t get strange until I got assigned to Linda. So let’s meet her.
Linda is a 42 year old efficiency expert. She’s the person companies hire in order to find the fat they want to trim. As such she tends to stay in, primarily because one night at a Tiki bar she got knocked unconscious with a coconut by someone whom her efficiency report got laid off. About two years ago, in order to feel less lonely, she adopted a cat. She tried online dating, but somehow she kept getting matched with people who got fired because of her.
I know all this because Linda thoroughly filled out her questionnaire. For instance, I know that at the age of nine she briefly owned a cat named Ruffles, but had to give him up because her sister turned out to be allergic, said loss becoming a subconscious irritant that’s always prevented the two from ever getting along. As I said, she filled it out thoroughly.
Her current kitty is a young Abyssinian named Raffles. Raffles enjoys sniffing sushi, playing with felt butterflies, and music by The Isley Brothers, especially the song “Just Came Here to Chill” off the album Baby Makin’ Music. Linda describes his personality as a cross between Leslie Knope, and Abelard, a castrated monk who lived 900 years ago whose love letters to the nun Heloise inspired Linda’s first erotic fantasies… thorough.
Armed with this in-depth report I sent Linda her first meow-message™ from Raffles:
“Sup?”
Three hours later she replied, “Hi.”
This is not uncommon. There is an understandable hesitance at times. For instance, it takes a mental leap to have a conversation with a cat through text messages, while watching said kitty clearly not text you. Most of my clients seemed remarkably at ease with such a leap. However, on occasion some folks needed to be coaxed into things.
“Hello.”
“Raffles?”
“Is there another cat?”
“No.”
“Then it’s me, Raffles.”
“What are you doing right now?”
A quick check of my notes, “Sleeping on that clock."
A moment later, “Yeah you are. How are you feeling?”
Hooked. Sure, I guessed, but making the right call pulled her into the fantasy.
Over the next several weeks Linda became one of my most regular clients. We exchanged messages constantly, a definite plus for me because I got a bonus for every one hundred I sent. Linda averaged 300 a week guaranteeing me an extra fifty bucks every month. But it was easy to talk to her. Unlike other clients I didn’t need to do any of the cutesy misspelled bullshit. I could message her like a real human being. That should’ve been a warning sign. Most people don’t want their pet to be their intellectual equal. Other conversational elements involved possible implications only retrospect could reveal.
Linda: “Being vulnerable is an unpleasant feeling.”
Raffles: “Well, you’re safe when I’m around.”
Linda: “You always know just what to say.”
Or more obviously that time she texted:
“I like this dress.”
“I’ll be sure not to get fur on it.”
“Well, then I’d just have to take it off.”
We talked for hours. She told me about her love of crepes, and how in high school she got detention for criticizing a teacher’s inefficient way of writing on the chalkboard. She confessed to loving her mother more than her father, and I told her I sometimes felt the same, then we joked how I was stray, I never knew them – “Oh silly Raffles.” Though we both agreed, if I were a Dickensian kitten, that would be the case, abandoned by daddy not mum. Connected by texts we went shopping together, waited for an oil change to finish, and all around killed time. I actually found myself looking forward to our conversations.
Everything came to a head a few days ago. I’m on the couch watching The House that Dripped Blood (1971), sitting there in a bathrobe and boxers, eating cereal out of a pint glass when Linda texts me.
She writes, “I got some wine.”
I reply, “Are we having a party?”
“Party for two.”
“Me and you?”
“Yep.”
“Sounds delightful. What’s the occasion?”
She replies, “There isn’t one per say, but we could make one.”
She then sent me a picture I can only describe as a fit 42 year old woman dressed in blue lingerie holding an Abyssinian. I then consulted the PDF training manual regarding this specific type of situation. Though employees of Feline Friends aren’t supposed to request sexting there is no outright prohibition if the client initiates it. Some people really love their cats. I read that section three times to be sure. However, despite no apparent ramifications I started to have doubts. It didn’t feel right. So I looked at the picture again.
I looked at her face, zoomed in on it. There’s no one mask to define desperation, but if there was it would’ve been Linda’s face. Her eyes begging. The photo erased my image of her as a crazy cat lady, replacing it with someone so desperate for human connection, yet so unable to find any she reached out into the void, grasping at this fantasy role playing as a means to indirectly connect with another person. She never thought of me as Raffles, the voice of her cat, she thought of me as a person, a human being. That’s what she wanted. And here, now, knowing nothing about me, she took another risk to fill another missing part of her life; imagine her standing there in her bedroom nervously sipping a glass of wine while waiting anxiously, heart thudding in her chest, not sure if she’s going to be humiliated, she’s out on a limb that might break at any moment, every passing second increasing the terror that another person is about to say no, you are unwanted; standing there naked in so many ways – it’s heart breaking.
Of course, that could just be me rationalizing what happened next…
I texted, “I like blue.”
“Me too.”
I told her not to send me anymore pics just give me the details. She agreed. Endeavoring to be professional I stood under an arctic torrent in the shower. She sexted awkwardly at first, by which I mean the fumbling steps of someone unfamiliar with how to proceed. However, it didn’t take long before she went into the kind of poetic details only someone sexually starved will use. Those used to regular sex use blunt terminology because they haven’t had time to over think the “steady oily trickle building to a flow, a flood” as a silver vibrator hums against “quivering labia” before being “muffled, swallowed whole, sending shivers” throughout a woman “melting with pleasure.” The rosy flush that came to her vaginal lips, the almost painful stiffening of her nipples, fingers circling the outside of her wet hole gushing juice down to her asshole – blue skinned from the icy shower I still managed to join in the moment.
In a way it felt wrong not to. Someone being that erotically open and intimate deserves a kind of reciprocation. Also, I’d’ve never been able to honestly reply to her question, “Was it good for you?”
“It was great for me.”
She texted, “I’m going to get more wine.”
“Good idea.”
A few minutes passed while she struggled to think of what to say, contemplating what’d just happened perhaps inspiring her to text, “Then I think I’m going to bed.”
“I might do the same.” At least to wrap myself in warm blankets before my hands broke off.
“Good night.”
I echoed, “Good night.”
“It was a good night?”
“The best.”
And I meant it, though immediately afterward I went to the freezer, cracked open a bottle of vodka, and aimed for black out. Not knowing what to feel I didn’t want to feel anything. Sometimes that’s easier. In the morning I found out Linda quit Feline Friends. That made things easier for me.
I emailed the head of HR, “I quit.”
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