I wasn’t gonna write anything today and I definitely wasn’t going to write up something I found on Reddit, but when I spotted this post on r/accounting, you know I just had to. I’m passionate about two things when it comes to content on this website: cats and creeper dudes who can’t keep it in their pants. Thankfully, the following is about the former:
So I posted earlier about my cat. She had seizures last friday so I missed work to bring her to ER vet. They found out she is in congestive heart failure due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I stay home from work on Monday because I was devasted and wouldn’t be able to concentrate at work and would probably spend most of my time crying in the bathroom. I go to work Tuesday and the partner chews me out saying that he is not going to have some cat stop him from making his millions. I wanted to tell him where he can shove his millions but I didn’t because I just spent $2000 in vet bills. Weds. my cat has breathing problems and take her to ER again. She had to get a surgical procedure done to remove excess fluid from her abdomen. Vet tells me she can breathe much better but I need to monitor her for 24 hours to make sure she remains stable. So here I am afraid to tell the partner that I need to work from home b/c of surgical after care.
Now you say, why don’t you put her down? My cat is stll being her cat self with a voracious appetite. She is still doing her cat thing other than the excess fluid. The vet says she is nowhere near the end…yet. I can’t give up on my cat. She was there for me when my mother was dying from cancer. I can’t abandon her. She is my fur baby.
It’s not likework is not getting done. It is. Partner is just antsy. He expects me to just go to work and leave my cat to die or put her down cuz its inconvenient for him? What would you do?
Look, I get it, there are people out there who think “it’s just a cat” and don’t understand why you have one in your home at all, much less clean up after it and put up with it constantly ruining your shit and flinging hair everywhere. But you don’t have to be a cat lover to understand why this is messed up.
And I’m just gonna say it: personal circumstances are personal circumstances. I’m not going to say that a sick kid is equivalent to a dying cat, but both situations involve personally-important causes and are, hopefully, rare occurrences that shouldn’t often affect your work life. But sometimes they do. In those rare cases, is it really too much to ask to be able to work from home just that one day?
Now, I suppose it would have been possible for OP to keep kitty at the vet for observation, but anyone who has ever funded even the briefest of stays at the emergency vet knows that ain’t cheap. And everyone here knows public accounting salaries aren’t so great across the board that we can expect the average grunt to be able to fund extraordinary vet care, including boarding and observation. Asking to work at home so OP can keep an eye on kitty per doctor’s orders is not at all extreme, nor does it warrant an attitude that basically implies a sick cat is inconveniencing the firm somehow.
I of all people can recognize that sometimes cats can interfere with one’s job, like that time I ran off to Connecticut to go rescue cats from a hoarder house with zero notice and made Colin do my job for four days while I paraded around in a hazmat suit. But assuming we’re getting the full story here and OP is otherwise a hardworking, valued contributor to the firm, then the partner is a dick.
Paws up if you agree, but feel free to express opinions to the contrary in the comments if you so desire. Except “dogs are better than cats,” that’s gonna get ya banned, end of story.
*cat in photo not actual cat in Reddit post
