National Professional Pet Babysitter's Week

Absent's first job, other than babysitting, McDonald's, and King Henry Apartments Cleaning-Check Slave, was as a Receptionist/Veterinary Assistant in a Veterinary office in my home town, the Iris Capital of the World. I got the job because I dated the Veterinarian's son, and the son was such a good guy that he felt badly that it didn't work out, and he convinced his parents to hire me to make it up to me.

I loved working there, but I wasn't a very good Veterinary Assistant. I hated that part. I would get sick during surgeries. I didn't have good reflexes during examinations, so I often got scratched, and I would cry every time we had to put an animal to sleep. But, I was a fairly good receptionist. I learned how to cheerfully say "no" when the situation merited it, how to explain office policies with the right amount of detail to get my own way, and how to get payment before services were rendered to ensure payment, all skills that I use to this day.

Many times while I worked at the Veterinary Clinic, I was asked to housesit/petsit for people I barely knew. My one qualification, they knew where I worked. And I was paid, I thought, ridiculous amounts of money to watch these animals. Once, I was paid $300 for one week. For one cat. And this was 10 years ago.

Well, of the times that I was asked to housesit/petsit, was for my high school AP US History teacher. Now, this teacher only knew me as "the Mormon girl that corrected him during the Joseph Smith lecture" and "the girl that argued with Senator Mark Hatfield when the television networks came to our school." (My one bold moment in high school.) I had to reintroduce myself while I was moving into their house. (His wife hired me.)

Mr. AP History Teacher (and beloved high school coach) and his wife were gone for two weeks. During the first week several things happened.

1) Almost half of the High School's football team, which was predicted to take the State Championship, decided to film themselves while they beat a mother possum to near death and then set fire to the poor animal. Then they showed in in their film class at school, assuming that no-one would tell. (And we wonder why football players have the reputation for being dumb.)

2) Those members of the team were suspended from playing at the State Championship.

3) Rumors spread around town that the team is going to "get back" at the school administration.

4) I found one of Mr. AP Teacher's cats dead on the back porch early on Thanksgiving morning.

Now, I had a pretty good imagination at that time (still do) and I have been accused of always assuming the worst in any given situation, (I am working on that) but, finding the cat dead on the porch freaked me out. Never mind that the cat was almost fifteen years old, it was one of the stormiest nights of the year, and I had heard it outside crying around 2am. I freaked out. (I know, I already said that.) I was sure that the football players had waited outside of Mr. AP History Teacher's house until they saw the cat and strangled it.

I took the cat into the office where I worked and made the doctor come done to the office to examine it, on Thanksgiving morning, to make sure it hadn't been murdered. He convinced me that it hadn't. Then, I had to wait another horrible week until AP History Teacher and his wife came home from their cruise to let them know their cat, and companion of fifteen years, had passed to the other side. Not my favorite-most-shining moment in life.

That was my last housesitting/petsitting experience, and probably not someone that I should put on my resume, if I ever decided to become a professional pet babysitter.

To all you professionals out there, hats off to you!