I’ll See You in Another Life, When We Are Both Cats

As some of you may or may not know, I work in the room service department for a 4-Star resort. Normally this is a very boring and redundant job. But every so often, there are moments when incredible things happen – in these rare moments, I have the best job on earth. Below is an account of one of those rare and fleeting moments:

Before we go any further, there’s one thing you need to know. The resort I work for has a program called “(Resort’s Name) Loves Pets.” Thanks to this program, guests can bring their pets with them to the resort. Guest can also order their pets, mostly of the dog and cat variety, special dishes on the room service menu. As repulsive as the idea of someone ordering room service for their pets is, it did lead to a pretty tremendous story.

So one epic night around 8 PM, while doing some tedious prep work, I noticed our normally jovial, slightly portly cashier/call-answerer pounding on his desk in the middle of the phone call. Shortly after he hung up the phone I walked over to inquire as to what the customer said to get him so riled up. He then proceeded to tell me a story of a clearly disturbed woman who would change all of our lives. Here’s a shortened, slightly paraphrased transcript of the phone call that transpired between our cashier, who we’ll call Joe, and the woman who will, for here on out, be known as Cat Lady.*

Note: These are just the highlights from the conversation; the actual call took well over seven minutes.

JOE: Thank you for calling room service, this is Joe. May I help you?

CAT LADY: Yes, I have two twin Persian kittens. What would you recommend for them?

JOE: - To eat?

CAT LADY: Yes, they seem hungry and I wanted to get them a special treat.

JOE: Well, I’m not very familiar with our pet dishes, but I hear all of them are very good.

CAT LADY: Well, I’ll just take one of each then…And a bowl of creamer for my darlings to drink.

JOE: OK ma’am. Will there be anything else we can get you?

CAT LADY: Actually I was wondering: Do you by chance have any outfits my cats could wear while they eat their suppers? (I’m pretty sure this is when the fist pounding commenced).

JOE: Well, I’m not sure, but I could check into it for you.

CAT LADY: OK, thanks. I’ll see you guys soon!

At this point, Joe hung up the phone and quickly relayed to us what had just transpired. Naturally, we were all enthralled, and concluded that this was the best/craziest person to ever order room service. And it turned out to be my lucky day, because it was my turn in the rotation to take the meal to this women, who, based purely on her phone call, is certifiably bat-sh*t insane. Upon hearing the news that I would be delivering this order, I started joyfully clapping my hands and jumping up and down in a circle. Wait, scratch that. My reaction wasn’t nearly that flamboyant. What I actually did was this: I started flexing and thinking about monster trucks. Yeah, that’s right, that’s how it happened.

Before Joe could put the order in to the cooks, we got a call from the front desk. As it turned out, this same lady had just called and asked if a bellboy could come up and read her cats a story. The front desk understandably became convinced that this was just a prank call, and that this woman had a great sense of humor. Obviously, we were all extremely saddened to find out this call wasn’t legit. Then, moments later, the front desk called to tell us that after checking her history, she has ordered pet dishes before. So, either this woman was as crazy as we initially thought, or she was the most elaborate, deep-pocketed practical joker of all time. Turns out it was the former.

So as I wheeled the cat litter and gourmet pet dishes up to this psycho’s room, I convinced myself that nothing that could happen inside the room could possibly come close to my expectations of how loony this lady was. Thankfully I was wrong, sort of. Here’s what transpired inside the room:

I wheeled by cart inside the room, and before I could begin my presentation of the assorted cat dishes, the woman interrupted me.

CAT LADY: Um, do you have any chairs my cats could sit on?

ME: (slightly flustered and perplexed) I think we’re all out (I didn’t even think we had any such chairs)**. We’re booked to full capacity this week (that part was true).

CAT LADY: Oh, are there a lot of Persians in house? (I assumed she meant the breed of cat as opposed to the human descendants of Persia, but I learned at a young age to never assume).

ME: (stunned, picking my jaw off the floor) Oh, I’m not sure on the exact number.

(At this point, I started biting my lower lip as hard as possible, so I did not laugh directly in this woman’s face. As I began to unwrap the cat food and place it on the floor, Cat Lady came over and started up another conversation with me.

CAT LADY: Oh, everything looks so great, what a nice treat for my darlings.

ME: (quivering because I’m biting my lip so hard) Yeah…

CAT LADY: Oh, if only they had little cat desserts, wouldn’t that be nice?

ME: (doing everything in my power not to lose my sh*t) Yeah, that would be something…

Nothing else major happened, and I made it through the whole ordeal without laughing at this woman. As I exited the room, I felt exhausted. I had used every once of self-control I had not to laugh at this woman, and it left me with nothing. Like a marathon runner, I had pushed myself to the limits, given all I could give. As I tiredly slumped back to the room service area, I realized that this was the best thing that had ever, or ever would, happen to me at work. The rest of my night was a complete blur: I was so drained from my encounter with Cat Lady.

So there you have it. And before you ask, let me just tell you that this is a true story. If I could make something this good up, I’d be writing award-winning fiction books and not posting here. Just trust me on this one.

Until We Meet Again

* “Catwoman” would be a better name, but it’s already taken, and the last thing I want to do is confuse people.
** It turns out we have special ‘pillowy’ chairs for pets that stay at our resort, and yes, this disgusts me.

Fluff Filled Fluff

Here’s a quick blog to tide you over as I finish editing a blog that will eventually change your life. Anyhow, here are a few things I’ve been thinking lately:

- Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Erwin was always kinda awesome, but mainly goofy. His death was about par for the course (too soon?).

- Seeing as how Carmelo Anthony was Team USA’s best player, and seeing as how he’s predominantly a mid-range shooter, shouldn’t we load up our national team with mid-range specialists? That’s why I feel pretty strongly that Mike Bibby and Rip Hamilton* should be added to the national team roster, and get ample playing time. If nothing else, this seems like a better plan than loading the team with athletes and slashers who all duplicate each other.

- No Daniel Hartman - I will leave you in!!!

- And now we’ve reached the segment of the blog where I’ll name-drop a phenomenal band that nobody’s ever heard of so that I can feel elitist: The National.

- Is anything better then all the baseball stories with the experts wondering why Home Runs are at a record setting pace this year. There are only two possible explanations for this but no one ever mentions either. The first explanation is that all the hitters just switched from steroids to HGH or (my pick) hitters in this era were always better and we’re starting to see that now more then ever since all the pitchers have stopped juicing. They way I see it these seem to be the two most logical options, yet every analyst just says thinks like “You really can’t explain it” and “It’s just one of those freak statistical years”. Look it’s either one of the two above, trying to pretend that it’s just some freaky coincidence, like Mark McGuire’s shrunken testicles during the ‘97 home run chase, is just embarrassing and insulting. The Jason Grimsley scandal proved to us that performance enhancing drugs were heavily apart of baseball for at least the past decade, therefore its only logical to that everything currently happening in baseball has to do with performance enhancing drugs either being used or no longer being used. It just depends on whether its players using an untestable kind or players sucking because they no longer use them.

- Miles Simon is a massive, massive tool.

- Ditto Zach Braff (Overrated)

- Is it just me, or is “Crossover,” the new movie about street basketball, about 3 years late? Along with their tardiness, the makers of this film failed to realize that Wayne Brady was never cool, or anything more than a one trick pony for that matter, and that no one would ever buy him as a villain (especially a seedy sports agent villain). And if that wasn’t enough, they hired the black guy from T(een)NBC’S “City Guys” to play the lead. Combine that with the uber homoerotic double alley-oop they keep showing in the trailer, and you’ve got a recipe for comedy gold. I feel like they made this movie just so I’d have something to watch on video at 3 in the morning a month from now. Thanks Tristar.

- It’s probably been over played by now, but I have to mention it: The new OKGO video is absolutely amazing. The song itself is beyond terrible, but the video might be the best thing I’ve ever seen. I ran into on MTV 2 one night while searching for something to watch during halftime of the FIBA World Championship. Despite what sounded like a musical abortion on my ears I couldn’t turn away from the screen. Just watch it and trust me on this one, the video is great: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI


- Top 5 Songs Currently Rocking me to the core:
1.) I’m From Barcelona** - Chicken Pox
2.) The National – Mr. November
3.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cheated Hearts
4.) Murs – Freak These Tales
5.) Killers – When You Were Young (See ya ‘round, indie street cred.)
Bonus Song.) Boy Star Library – Me and Julia

- Work Story Time: As some of you may know I work the graveyard shift for a 4-star resort in Tucson. This resort, which for now will remain nameless, was hosting this years Mrs. America Pageant. So for the past few weeks theirs been 50 Beauty Queens running around the resort***.
One night while I was picking up a tray I ran into and had a brief conversation with Mrs. North Carolina. After the usual clichés Mrs. NC and I had the following exchange:

Me: So according to Vegas you’re favored to win the entire pageant****.

Mrs. North Carolina: Oh Mrs. Vegas said that?

Me: (Complete awestruck) Um.. no…

- And there you have it. I can’t think of anything else to write and I’m about to pass out, so I’m off. Stay tuned later this week (or next week)for an earth-shattering blog to end all blogs.

Until We Meet Again


* Try as I might, I couldn’t think of any other mid-range players. Has the basketball in America de-evolved so much that there are only 3 players left in the game who have dominant mid-range games? My answer: yes.
** Another brilliant band from Sweden. They’re hardcore tween pop and they sound like a combination of The Polyphonics Spree and Boy Least Likely.
*** Quick side not that I can’t prove: I’m pretty sure most of the Mrs. America contestants are married to gay men just so they can have the title Mrs. And thus have a better chance at gaining the crown. Either that or they all have gay entourages.
****Yes the fact that I brought up imaginary gambling odds in a casual conversation proves that I have a gambling problem, so what?