The Virtual Cat

The Virtual Cat Story.

    A lot of good stories begin with “once upon a time…” and lead your imagination off, toward a phantom idea or chance happening. However, in this day’s multimedia extravaganza of many dimensioned sound, art and parallel universes it is too simple to behave naturally in bizarre situations.           

    For example yesterday I learned that Lyndsay is expecting her and John’s, first child. A Boy. After my first reaction of Great Joy, my next concrete thought was the Boy would need a real baby’s blanket, not a virtual one. Real children deserve real blankets. Virtual children are swaddled in chimera. And that thought led me back to the Virtual Horse Blanket, and the real horse blanket, the one I bought Lyndsay. And those thoughts socked me back to the virtual cat.           

   Huh? you say what the hell is this rambling mess! Honest, it is absolute straight line fact once you see bigger picture. This is not THE BIG PICTURE, just the broader environment that allowed me to work with Lyndsay and the other six or seven people at MBM. MBM is/was a creative marketing agency owned by the BOSS, and operated by PIP, with the assistance of the others and myself. If you think turbulence is just the water spinning down the drain, then your life is missing a whacky day at MBM. We survived each other, willingly. In a big barn of a rescued flour emporium in the swinging up-beat of NEW AGE ARTY FARTY office space, MBM had that “swing”.            

    As the geezer of the group, my idiosyncrasies were nominally tolerated or ignored. There was a minimum of two decades in age difference between the next oldest and me, and more than that for most others. I knew just enough “stuff” to be useful. Experience and good humor counts for something.           

   Youth can be a virtue and Lyndsay had the enthusiasm to take on the BOSS and straighten him and general operations out, with some dutiful mentoring. Now enter the parallel universe: a client/neighbor from the big building across the street walked through with his office dog. Lovely animal, with a nice bandana. Crisp starched bandana, I might add. Tony the instigator brought up in a office meeting that an office pet might be nice. Which lead to a discussion about appropriate office pets lada lada lada which achieved agreement on a cat. So the idea was proposed to the BOSS, a dog man I am certain, who promptly fell out of his chair, not taking the idea seriously. Then he took the idea UNDER ADVISEMENT. That is BOSSISM for no.           

    Which started the virtual cat. Which begat the Horse Blankets for the virtual horse. Do you see?            The behavior was truly suspicious. Tony the instigator became Tony the enabler. While I proved the forward motion on the virtual cat with a real cat food dish and a litter pan, others who remain nameless proved cat toys and paper balls, and … things like e-mails about closing the windows at night… you get the virtual picture.           

    I can be corrected on this, but I believe the BOSS, after surveying the food dish, litter box, etc., asked if there was a cat in the house so to speak. The reply was: no there is a virtual cat, which drew a puzzled look. Real cat food or virtual cat food? Real litter or virtual litter? Real turds or virtual turds? Real humor or virtual humor? Life has it subtleties.            

    Which all gets this story closer to the Virtual Horse Blanket. The employees had been led to believe that they would be the recipient of an annual bonus, a monetary reward, from the BOSS for working at MBM under some unusual conditions. Real or imaginary, there was profound disappointment among the worker bees when the much discussed BONUS went elsewhere. Instead of a BONUS, knit company logoed monogrammed pull-over ear warmers were passed out. Mutiny was openly discussed. The BOSS heard the dissention, it was loud and open and in-your-face anger, so bought a bunch of Derby Party Favor wool 6’ x 6’ flannel horse blankets for the staff. Slim pickings when you busted your butt, stayed loyal through a couple years of financial turmoil, and all you got was your choice of a gold or blue celebrity horse blanket? The thought did not count.           

    Obviously this was not a real high point of anyone’s career at MBM. My sense of dark humor led me to introduce the Virtual Horse, since we all had real horse blankets and no real need for them, along with our ear warmers. Lyndsay did wrap herself in her blanket: the architecturally beautiful windows next to her work area were cold. So her blanket had some use. Further, she was given a real genuine horse warming blanket as a wedding present, but has never had a horse.           

    In creating this story only facts from my memory were used. A geezer memory. No real animals were consumed or hurt in any fashion. I insist the virtual cat, all cat implements, and the virtual horse did exist. If the real facts differ from my memory and the reality of them improves this story, let me at them. I suggest that is virtually impossible.