Lizzie's Song

Meet Lizzie: a medium hair dilute calico cat who lives in Florida. Lizzie enjoys spending her days chasing fuzzballs, wrestling her sister, and taking naps in the clothes hamper. She is a very sweet and affectionate kitty who is hard not to love. She’s also a class traitor and an enemy to the working class, albeit unintentionally….

Lizzie’s humans, Hank and Marie Simmons, tell us that she has always been a very vociferous cat.

“The foster we adopted her from said she ‘loves the sound of her own cute voice’,” says Hank, “and that ‘you can hear her singing her song all throughout the day’. Guess we should’ve known that meant this cat never shuts the hell up.”

“Not that we don’t like it,” adds Marie.

“Oh, not at all,” says Hank. “It’s an adorable personality quirk and frankly pretty funny. It’s just part of the background noise of our house now.”

The Simmonses sent us videos confirming that Lizzie really is not only a meowing virtuoso (“virtumeowso”?) but also proficient in chittering, purring, trilling, and is even known to growl when someone’s at the door. Also, this was a phone interview and we could hear her in the background like the entire time.

“She’ll meow to let you know she just woke up,” says Marie. “Or because she wants you to wake up. Or so you know she’s just entered the room. Or that her food dish is empty. Or when she wants a treat. Or that she just used the litter box. Or if she wants to play. Or she wants to get up on your lap. And sometimes just so you’ll pay attention to her.”

“A lot of the time,” adds Hank, “there just doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. She just makes noise for the sake of making noise.”

So how in the world did this adorable yet talkative calico become the bane of an office suite’s worth of work-from-home employees?

“Well back when they started clearing out offices because of covid,” says Marie, “our company had everyone go remote. Later, after they decided we just had to live with covid, they gave us the option to either stay remote or come back to the office. Most of us chose to stay remote. It’s not a job you need to be in an office to perform nor is it worth the commute into Tampa just to do it at a different desk. In fact, we’re much more efficient now than we ever were back in the rat maze.

“Also,” she adds, “I finally just forgot the way that place smells when Bob from Client Relations airs his feet out under his desk.”

Marie, who works for the firm Firebolt Marketing Logistics s (FML) in the Data Collection and Compiling department, says the company relies heavily on conference calls over apps like Zoom or Teams, often using video, and that’s how Lizzie became a regular participant in work meetings.

“Oh yeah,” says Trish, one of Marie’s coworkers, “you can always hear Lizzie in the background when Marie’s on. She’s so cute!”

“Sometimes she’ll even walk across the desk and make an appearance,” says Benny, a marketing research analyst. “Always worth a chuckle.”

“She’s like an unofficial member of staff,” says Marc, yet another coworker. “She’s about as vocal on those calls as any of us. And more so than some of us, Steve! Sorry, Steve’s not here, but that was about Steve not participating.”

But not everyone is as taken with Lizzie’s auditory shenanigans and she’s even been labeled a disruptive presence in the virtual office.

Last week, FML ordered everyone in Marie’s department to return to their vacant cubicles and resume working from there. The main reason for the change: Lizzie.

“They didn’t come right out and say it was because of Lizzie,” says Marie, “but you can tell. The email said things like ‘there are clearly too many distractions’ in our home offices and ‘intrusive noises coming from one employee can cause others to lose concentration’, stuff like that. I mean, I’d argue that Lizzie is the only reason some of them pay attention at all, but what do I know?”

“It’s so stupid,” says Benny. “Marie’s cat isn’t any more distracting than the street repairs outside, those stupid ‘huddles’ the managers have in the middle of the office to pat themselves on the back for all our hard work, or Bob from Client Relations coming over to try and bait us into arguing about politics with him. No, I don't have ‘Trump derangement syndrome’, Bob, I’m just trying to work here!”

To clarify this matter we spoke to Mitch Haysbert, head of Data Collection and Compiling and Marie’s boss.

“Which one’s Marie,” asks Haysbert, “the one with the screaming-ass cat? Yeah, we definitely need her back here. Because of the cat, right? That’s what we told them? Okay, yeah, yes, we need her back because her cat was too obnoxious or whatever.”

“I don’t know, seems fishy,” says Jared from Client Relations. “I say that because our head of department told us we had to come back because people kept Zooming in from their patio or the beach. Or, in Bob’s case, from the toilet. The implication being of course that we’re relaxing instead of working, but I don’t get how there’s a problem if the work was still getting done to their standard. Also the beach thing only happened once and I was technically on PTO.”

“We all had to come back, so we’re told,” says Jennifer from Accounting, “because my husband came out of the shower and accidentally walked within view of my camera completely naked. On top of that my department head is now insisting that my husband come take a job here as well, which is concerning.”

“They made me come back,” says Giuseppe from the janitorial staff, “because they said more people in the office meant the restrooms and common areas needed to be cleaned more often.”

Okay, that last one might actually be legit.

“Bringing everyone back after years of remote working causes a whole slew of issues to emerge,” says FML Human Resources rep Deborah. “Everything's cropping back up from interpersonal drama to lunch thievery all the way up to complaints about people's personal hygiene. But enough about Bob from Client Relations! Oh, I kid, but I'm seriously having the time of my life! Not that that’s why I was so excited to get everyone back here, but it’s certainly a plus!”

All that being said, Mitch Haysbert still insists the mandate was… mandated because of Lizzie the cat.

“Oh yeah, it’s definitely the cat,” says Haysbert. “I mean, it’s also that in-person interaction is, hang on, what was it…”

Haysbert takes a moment to read something off the notes app on his phone.

“Okay, it’s also that in-person interaction is the catalyst for creativity and innovation and without that we can’t thrive as a company. But mainly it’s just that cat is really annoying, which I know because I was always totally present for those Zoom meetings and not just muting it while I argued with people on Reddit or whatever.

“And listen,” he adds unprompted, “if any of these people here tell you it’s because we’re on some kind of power trip or that the department heads had a meeting and realized that without people in the office to supervise our jobs aren’t necessary or that doing this meant some employees would quit and save us from having to do layoffs which would definitely include unnecessary department heads or that our CEO has some kind of shady deal with his buddy who runs the office rental company we lease from, just know they’re all liars who are mad they can’t work from bed while eating Cheetos and playing Candy Crush anymore. It’s all about the cat and none of that other stuff I just said. Actually you probably don’t even need to quote me on this because it’s all so incidental, just say it’s because the cat is too loud.”

Whatever the reason, and we’re guessing it’s probably not Lizzie’s constant mewling, the fact remains that Marie and her coworkers are heading back to their cubicles.

“I can probably start looking for another fully remote position,” says Marie, “but with the market right now I don’t know how likely it is to find something else. So I’m just gonna have to go back, try to avoid Bob as best I can, and do my job as efficiently as possible in that chaotic environment. I’m just gonna keep my head down and go home at the end of each day with the hope that they’ll come back around on letting us work remotely.”

Given the reality of the situation, we’re sorry to say that Lizzie might be singing to an audience of no one for a very long time. At least during working hours that is.