A Corporate Strategy Meeting...with my Cats

At what point during these five months of unemployment precisely did I lose my mind?  I am (ok...was) a software consultant for a very well-known German software company, traveling non-stop, consulting for Fortune 100 companies, advising and recommending, going toe-to-toe with some important highly paid decision makers.  Yes, I loved my job and it loved me back!  Now I'm unemployed, spending way too much time with my cats.

This afternoon, after I took Kwinn, my Siamese cat, to his vet appointment (yes, he is still throwing up and I was told today he may need to be on steroids the rest of his life...which could be shortened if I so desire), I decided that I needed to get back into "work" mode so that I would be more enthusiastic about searching for a job.  I mean, lets face it, right now, after months of being ignored by recruiters and hiring managers, emails of "thanks, but we've already found our candidate", I'm losing my drive to keep going and I'm thinking of posting my resume as an experienced "Samurai Warrior" on Monster.com (I do have an obsession with Samurai's due to a college class I took once...I'll explain more about that later, but I did mention it in a previous posting.) just to see if I get any hits.  So, to get back into "work" mode, I made Kwinn and my other cat, Kat, sit down in my home office and have a corporate strategy meeting with me.

I know, this does sound insane, and I'm thinking if Pat (the boyfriend) reads this, he may reconsider moving his things into my house, but I felt compelled.  The order of business between myself, Kwinn and Kat was to discuss a gap analysis I came up with for a pseudo company, who was moving from their old software system to my recommended software system.  For those non-geeks out there, a gap analysis highlights what the existing company's software can do that my new improved software cannot.

I handed each of my felines a copy of the spreadsheet I made, showing what the existing "fake" software does versus what my software does.  They each glanced and sniffed at the paper placed in front of them.  Kwinn began to rub his whiskers on it to mark it as "his" and Kat just looked at me as if to ask where were the snacks that were promised for the meeting.  Of course, due to my narcissism, there were no gaps in what my software could offer, thus my meeting was rather abbreviated (and because the attention span of a cat is, well you know, short).

I truly understand that this might sound a bit weird and some of you may even be wondering if I'm still taking my medication, but I needed to do this.  It does help to feel like I haven't lost all of my consulting ability, and well, I have two cats who do nothing else but eat and sleep, and because they are strictly indoor cats, they are a captive audience, so it gives us all something to do.  Tomorrow we are going to go over the budget, and the day after that we will take a look at the project plan and decide if we can meet our milestones.  It will be a working lunch meeting and I've already promised salmon to those who show up on time.

--Fortuitous Observer

PS.  I know not everyone likes cats, so this link is for you cat haters of the world.

PSS.  This is a great blog if you are into silly cat pics with captions (whether or not you love or hate cats):

see more Lolcats and funny pictures