The Shaved Pussy (Cat)

I was hired for my new role in June and until September I felt like I have seen it all: early mornings, very late evenings, skipped lunch breaks, week-end working. You name it, I did it! But I was surrounded by amazing, intelligent, hard working people and I felt that we were a small bee family where everyone was doing their best in order to finish all the tasks in time.

So, when I have heard that a new colleague will join the team on temporary basis, I was more than thrilled. To me, every new person that I meet is a blank canvas. I usually add a bit of respect, a splash of admiration and a slice of appreciation, depending on our relationship dynamic. And if we don't vibe, then I just distance myself organically from that person and I just become indifferent. We can't all be friends, after all.

In the office, sometimes we had good days without major problems and we even had time to crack a joke, ask about each others wellbeing, talk about families, relationships, eat a biscuit or drink a coffee and chat for a few minutes next to the coffee machine.

Other times, the gods were against us and the printer stopped working suddenly.

And then... there were those times when nasty, inconsiderate people were the reason that the printer stopped working.

And this is how I got acquainted with today's main character, Miss A.

Miss A was a "nasty gal" and it didn't take her long to offend everyone in the office, from the cleaning lady to the big boss. People who didn't even worked with her, people from other teams and other floors were affected by her incredibly rude behaviour. Just a quick example here: when the paper was jammed in the printer, instead of following the steps showed on the little screen, she always decided that she was such a busy, posh, business-woman that can't afford to spend 60 seconds of her precious time with such an menial task.

In her first two weeks, day by day, a new passive aggressive comment was sent flying towards people around her. And the "best" part was that I was the closest to her. She was breathing down my neck. Literally. Our chairs were back to back, with only few inches in between. Nasty remarks, unnecessary contradictions or never ending polemics started to be the norm in the office. Friendly, relaxed discussions were brutally interrupted by her and taken to some utterly ridiculous extents.

During one amicable discussion with my colleague, Mr S, (mentioned in my previous post) while we were having some friendly banter about annoying, disgusting habits that our partners had, she felt the need to intervene, just to announce in the office that she feels sorry for my daughter because she has a mom like me. Hmmm... that empty canvas that I mentioned earlier just got deeply soaked in shit and nobody will be able to ever clean it.

My mind was racing. How can someone be so inconsiderate and blatant?

Why would someone say something about my family while at work? She didn't know anything about me or my family.

Bam! She pushed the big red button. I felt like Ferdinand the Bull when he got stung by a bee. I told her that my daughter is lucky because she only has me. Her father left us when she was one year old and 6 years after, he lost his life.

A normal, sane person, will just mutter an apology and close the subject. But we are not discussing now about a sane person. Miss A decided to continue the conversation in spite of the awkwardness of the discussion. She said that only bad people get sick. She gave us the example of her uncle, who lived in Bangladesh, who was a bad man, he did loads of bad things, even if he was a big shot politician, and because of his behaviour his wife gave birth to an autistic child.

Silence. The whole office was suddenly on mute. Everybody was attentive to her, bad-mouthing her family, and nobody was able to recover from the shock. She was wrong on so many levels that nobody wanted to get involved in such a ridiculous, cruel and idiotic discussion. Then, the awkward silence has been cut by our splendid manager, Mrs L, the most caring, intelligent and beautiful human Barbie doll that was ever born. She softly said: "But my father was an amazing, kind man and he still got cancer..."

The discussion ended there and then. Everybody got back to work like nothing happened, some of them even a bit entertained by the circus. But I was fuming. Picking on me it's one thing, because I try not to take things to heart when Miss A is telling me: "Oh, sometimes I feel like you are my sister. Both of you annoy me so much!" I am able to see this as a hidden compliment. But upsetting my favourite person in the bank, that's another thing. I couldn't wait to see how karma will make things right.

I didn't have to wait long. A few days later, I could hear Miss A aka Nasty Girl, talking loudly on her mobile. My interest in her persona, her activities or her life was minus infinite. For me she was just ambient noise. But it got my attention when I heard the word: CAT. It seemed like her cat was sick and she needed to go home early. The next day I was concerned and I had to ask about the cat's condition. I felt as sorry for her cat like she felt sorry for my daughter.

Me: Hey, how is your cat? All good?

Miss A: Oh yes. When I got home yesterday I saw that it had an infected wound on its belly. But the vet was too far, so I had to call a special vet ambulance. And now I am so annoyed that the ambulance was so expensive. I paid £60 for it, plus another £100 for the consultation and cleaning the wound.

Me: Oh, ok. So the cat is fine now? Did they tell you what happened?

Miss A: The doctor thinks it was a fox bite but Missy is fine now.

Me: Aww bless her. I am happy she is ok.

Miss A: My cat is a boy, but I just like to call him Missy...

Me: Oh, sorry, I didn't know that. Anyway, thank God it was nothing serious.

Again... a normal person will just drop the conversation. We exchanged the necessary information, the cat was recovering at home, end of story. But nooo. Miss A couldn't just stop there. She felt the need to feed us the phrase that made the tour of the office and that has been a leitmotif dozens of times afterwards, during each after-work pub session. She added: "Yes, the vet shaved her feathers and now we just have to wait for them to grow back."

Everyone was in hysterics, under the desks with laughter. To add fuel to the fire, our funniest colleague, Mr N, started to flap his hands and said: Meowwwww!!

I do live for moments like these, when laughter is so uncontrollable that you can't even breath. This is why it's called: dying of laughter.

Cutting the story short, I do have more than one extra story involving Miss A, but I will save it for another time.

Have a good one, everybody, and may you win at the Lottery of Life!