The Cat Erased My Story
By: Jodi Cowles
Tags: Working From Home, Mobile Office, Writing, Cats, Writers Life

The Cat Erased My Story

I’m not sure I’d open with that if I were you…

I worked in a cubicle once. Or rather, a series of cubicles over almost ten years. Sure, I can say I used to live an exciting and exotic life in Southern California where the sun never stops shining and you can surf and tan all year round and maybe once in awhile see a movie star filling up their gas tank — but for the vast majority of my time it meant going back and forth to work every day, the same as all the other schlubs in all the other colder states, just with more traffic. And in winter, it meant zipping to work before the sun came up and trudging home after it had already gone down.

In all my years slogging for a nationally-recognized insurance company that shall not be named, I never made it into management — which means I did my time stuck smack dab in the middle of institutionally-lit cubeland, not on the outer ring of offices that enjoyed a window and a brief gasp of sunlight.

The Modern Mobile Office

With great thankfulness, I can now say that I operate out of what I like to call a mobile office. The benefits of the mobile office are many, not the least of which is that if you look up from your coffee shop table and see that the sun has come out to surprise everyone during a normally grey and cold Istanbul January, you can quickly pay your bill and dash outside. Yesterday was the first time that ever happened, but a girl can dream.

I walked to the park down the street and sat down, pushed up my sleeves and pulled up my pant legs, and started the serious work of converting sunlight into Vitamin D.

Then Hark, a story idea! I whipped out my computer and started tap-tapping away, when suddenly someone knocked on my cubicle wall.

Marking her territory in case one of the other hundred cats in the park decides to try to claim me.

Istanbul is full of cats. It’s kind of a thing. There’s even a movie about it. In our particular park there’s a series of ramshackle huts we call the cat palace, housing at least a hundred stray cats. But as everyone says, there are very few real strays in Istanbul, they’re mostly well-fed and partly domesticated.

I’ve seen businessmen in suits reach into their briefcase and pull out a bag of cat food while we wait for the ferry, random old guys giving all the new kittens shots on their own dime, and of course the farmers market near our park every Saturday is always a bonanza for them.

How can pets or babies hitting keys at random cause such technological distress?

In only a few brief moments, my new friend managed to add some “zhdkelvn” to the story I was working on, changed my Siri voice back to the original from the soothing British guy I prefer, and opened a new browser. I was so busy trying to get a picture while swatting her away from the keyboard that I was worried she was going to erase my hard drive.

In the past, if I hadn’t been trying to protect my computer, I would have given the sweet cat a little love. But everything is different now — last week I read about two women in Turkey who went blind because of a parasite cats carry and passed on to them. Without petting this one, I was already thinking about how I’d need to bleach my hands and computer when I got home before I touched my daughter.

Maybe a little scratching your leg to finish off...

Today I’m back in the coffee shop, cat-less. Just so you know, that’s not a given. Most cafes on our street have a cat hanging out somewhere, and sometimes you have to push them off the chair to sit down. It’s raining and grey outside, and I’m feeling thankful for my modern mobile office.