The 'Idea Cat' of Seniors Junction

My name is Winnie. It’s short for Winchester. My human, Paul, said Winchester sounded too serious. Paul, my sister Daisy, and I all work in our home office for Seniors Junction. It’s very important work, and I do my best to keep the team productive every day. Seniors Junction is a startup, whatever that means. I know that we have recorded a lot of podcasts, and I have made sure that I appear in every one! Sometimes I tried typing a bit on the computer keyboard, but Paul shouted, “No Winnie, don’t walk on the keyboard.” I also make sure the webcam gets a good view of me as I walk on the desk.

It’s late at night and now I have the keyboard to myself. I heard Paul say he would nominate me for EmPAWyee of the month but he doesn’t have time to write the letter. I do. I can’t spell in English, of course. I understand English. Actually I have quite a good vocabulary. But my first language is Siamese naturally. Luckily, the computer has a Siamese to English translation program, so I’m all set.

Let’s see. Why should I be the EmPAWyee of the month? Well first of all there’s a lot of brainstorming in a startup. How do we market? How do we sell? Do we need a full-time tech officer? Paul is always trying answer these questions, especially when he talks over the computer with his business partner. She always seems to have the right idea, and when she comes up with another good plan, I say “Wow!” That word means the same in Siamese and in English. She understands that I’m confirming what she says, and then the company can decide and move forward. I think that is a very important contribution.

A human relaxes when they pet a cat. That’s well known, isn’t it? And the sound of our purring calms a tense human down. That’s helpful, I know. And people working need to take breaks. They can’t work all the time. They’d burn out. I make sure that Paul takes plenty of breaks. When possible, I encourage him to cat nap.

When it comes to routines, cats are way ahead of humans. Sometimes I think that Paul would screw up his whole cycle of sleeping and eating if it weren’t for us. If our service is a minute too late, we speak up! If he’s going to sleep in, forget it, we’ll make sure he wakes up on time, ahead of time, even. Yes, if you want to know something about routines or habits, don’t take advice from a human, ask a cat!

There’s a lot of concentrated writing work to be done in Seniors Junction, and Daisy and I are dedicated to that. When Paul is sitting at the computer, writing, we lie down right beside him to help.

Most people know that cats are telepathic. When you don’t do what we want, we stare you down, burrowing into your minds, until you understand what is needed. It’s a gift. But not everyone knows we can communicate business ideas to you telepathically. More than once Paul thought he got an idea out of the blue, a good one, a real brain wave. Well, you guessed it, sometimes Daisy tells him telepathically, sometimes I give him a good idea. We don’t get credit for that, but then that’s what this contest is all about, isn’t it? Finally you’re going to recognize the contribution of pets to your businesses!

For starters, who do you think keeps the business going at this end when Paul goes for a walk or steps out to play tennis, or whatever he does? We do, of course. You can check the computer. The emails get answered, the work gets done, even when he’s out of the house. Who did you think keeps the ship afloat while he’s out of the office?

I’m sure most of you realize that cats are a highly evolved species. Have you thought about our voices, how we sound? Very often when I make a comment on a call, the caller says, “Is that a child?” It’s me of course, but think of how many generations of feline evolution have unfolded so that I can sound like a human child, and get Paul’s attention when I need it! Have you read the regression analyses (You didn’t even think I knew that term, did you?)? All domestic cats (and remember we’re self-domesticated—you didn’t tame us) came from one ancient cat that wandered into a granary in Mesopotamia. So there! That’s a lot of generations of cats. Better than your genealogy, I imagine!

Have you seen a human get stuck trying to make a business decision? It’s a sad sight. They just look at the same thing in the same way again and again. Daisy and I make sure we move all the papers around so Paul can have a fresh perspective every time he looks at a paper.

I admit we can learn a lot from humans about business. For instance, you’re pretty good at specializing, and taking on different tasks and roles. Paul might say, “I’ll do that onboarding,” and his partner might say “I’ll look after the diagnostics.” You humans even use titles: executive officer, operating officer, things like that.

Daisy and I have started to divide the tasks and take on different roles. For example, I am more of an “idea cat.” I am a sort of "think tank" cat, maybe more of a manager. I come up with great ideas. I think I ought to take on the supervisory role and Daisy is better suited to carrying my ideas out. Sometimes she says “Hiss, hiss, hiss hiss hiss!” which in Siamese means “You’re not the boss of me!” Then Paul claps his hands and says “No fighting!”

Space issues can be big in the office. For example, who gets the sunniest spot in the window? If Paul takes one office chair, which one of us gets the other chair? I might stretch out on the couch for a while. Then if Daisy’s in the second chair, and I disagree, “Hiss hiss!” “No fighting!”

I’m not sure it would settle anything to get a bigger office, because we would still fight over the best spots. The warmest, highest, and especially the closest to Paul.

But I don’t mean to create the impression that Daisy and I are always disagreeing. When there’s a really important issue, we work together. For example if a fly gets into the office, well hunting a fly is not easy, and we work at that earnestly and together. The other parts of the business have to be kept on hold until we get the fly.

And as for outreach, if I understand that word well, and as I’ve written, my English is good, when I get on the couch or bed, I reach way out so no one else can have any space. That’s what’s meant by good outreach, isn’t it?

But there are even better reasons I ought to be EmPAWee of the month. I’m tuned in to the core values of the business. Seniors Junction was formed to help eliminate social isolation in the large population of senior people. It intends to provide seniors with purpose and social connectedness. As a cat I believe in those goals and values. Isolation is a terrible thing. Once for a recording session Paul shut me out of the room with the computer, and I was very upset. He said I made more of a disturbance than if he had left me in the room, and that was the last time he did that.

Seniors Junction offers courses. I keep up with those. One is on bridge. Do you know how hard it is for a cat to play bridge? Holding all those cards... Exhausting just to think about it...

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that dogs do not have purpose. I don’t have experience with dogs, so I wouldn’t know. But cats have purpose. Back to office furniture again, one of our rooms has a crate with a nice, rough canvas surface. When I lie on top of it the texture is perfect. There’s actually also a canvas chair in that room, so there’s more than enough canvas there. The other room, though, the room with the computer, isn’t set up so well. Those chairs are just leather.

The SJ team has been spending much more time at the computer, so we work more in the room with the leather chairs, and I decided, hey, why not be comfortable while I work? So I went to the other room, braced my back paws against the wall, stretched, and gave that crate a good push. It was heavy, and I got tired, but I moved it a fair bit that first day.

No one moved it back, so the second day I did the same thing and moved it along a few more inches. Paul remarked on it, and was curious to see what I was doing. Inside of a week I pushed the crate out into the hall and turned the corner. In another week I moved it around the corner into the computer room. Comfortable at last! So you see I know about purposeful activities. I understand Seniors Junction.

Well I don’t know if I can tell you much more about my work. I assist on recordings, cold calls, emails, and brainstorming. I keep close track of my human and make sure that he is supported and encouraged, and that he keeps to a schedule and routine.

I’m a happy productive employee and I do a lot for office morale. I would supervise Daisy if she would let me, but sometimes she goes off in her own direction. I can tell you truly that Paul would be lost without me.

So give a guy a break. Recognize my contribution. Please vote for me, Winnie, for EmPawyee of the month. And what is it that Paul writes at the end of his things? Oh yes, “Thank you for reading.”