Crazy about the Cat Lady

Chapter 1 It’s two in the morning, and Dayla Jeffreys lays on her back in bed, scrolling through part-time job listings on the Indeed app. She should really get some sleep—she has to get up in four hours if she hopes to make it to her current job on time—but for the life of her, she can’t seem to turn off the phone. As the minutes tick by, she knows she’ll hate herself in the morning, especially since the eight-to-two shift at the hair salon where she works is the slowest shift ever, but every time she gets to the end of the listings, she thinks, Just one more page, and ignores the way her eyes burn when she blinks. She just needs something that will give her a few more bucks, that’s all. Something to tide her over when tips are down between paychecks. Doing hair at a high-end salon downtown is all fine and good, but she only has a handful of clients and Blossom isn’t exactly the Hair Cuttery. They don’t take walk-ins. But her hours at the salon change every day. Sometimes she works late mornings, sometimes early afternoons. Sometimes she closes and sometimes—like tomorrow—she opens. So she can’t just get any old part-time gig. She needs something flexible, something that will work around her current schedule or, better yet, let her set her own hours. Which eliminates any admin or office job—all those seem to want someone first thing in the morning, and she has a hard enough time getting up when she has to open as it is. If she suddenly couldn’t open because she had another job to do, her bosses might not be too happy about that. And as much as a few extra dollars here and there would be a nice help with the bills, doing hair is her first love. Styling, cutting, dyeing, highlighting…she loves it all. And she doesn’t want to give it up for a crappy position somewhere pulling down minimum wage. She keeps scrolling through the listings, rejecting most without bothering to read the job description. She passes on the office jobs, and on the retail ones, too—she stands on her feet enough as it is, thank you very much. And she’s tired of seeing the sponsored ads for Lyft or Uber at the top of every page. Her car’s a piece of s**t and she’s still paying off the tires she had to buy two months back—retreads, at that—and there’s no way she’d taxi people around for a few measly bucks. Knowing her luck, all the calls would come in after she’s already in bed. Like I am now. She should really get some sleep. One more page. Not that she’s expecting to find much of anything at this point. She’s gone through fifteen pages, each with twenty listings apiece, and every time she clicks on the Load More button, her chances of finding something she wants to apply for that also pays more than a pittance grow slimmer. Maybe if she narrows it down a bit—she only put “part-time” in the search field—but part of the problem is she doesn’t really know what she’s looking for. Her contract with Blossom prevents her from taking a hairdresser position somewhere else as long as she’s with them, and she doesn’t really have many skills other than hair and makeup. Maybe she can find a job giving out wine or food samples. She’s seen people doing that at the store… Just as she’s about to press her luck and load the next page, one of the listings catches her eye. The position just says sitter, which is ambiguous and could mean anything. Babysitter? Dayla doesn’t really like kids, so that’s out. Pet sitter? She’s scared of dogs. And birds. And she’s allergic to rabbits. So that’s probably out, too. Maybe someone needs a seat filler, an actual sit-ter, which might be cool if she lived in Hollywood or somewhere they had awards shows, but here in Richmond, Virginia, she can’t imagine why anyone would want to pay her to sit in a seat. People used to sit up with the dead, her mind whispers. Hard on the heels of that thought is another. No way in hell am I doing that. Still, it won’t hurt to take a look. Before she can change her mind, she taps on the listing. When the page loads, the first thing she sees is a question. Do you like cats? Aloud, she murmurs, “Yeah, who doesn’t?” She grew up with them—her family always had an indoor cat, and her father frequently fed a number of neighborhood strays, too. The cat she’d grown up with was an orange and white tom she’d named Peanut, and thinking back, she has to giggle at the nickname she’d given him, Peanie. It was cute then, but now it sounds like something a little boy would call his…well, that. As her giggles threaten to get out of control, Dayla clamps her lips tight together and muffles the laughter. She lives in a one bedroom apartment with paper-thin walls, and the last thing she needs is to hear her neighbor bang on the one separating their bedrooms because she’s making too much noise so late at night. Too bad management doesn’t allow pets or she’d probably have a cat of her own now. Not Peanut, who was sixteen the year she graduated from high school. He’d had renal failure and was put to sleep at the end of that summer, just before she left for beauty school. Sometimes she still misses him. And just like that, the giggles are gone now, and the beginning of tears prick her tired eyes. Blinking them away, she quickly scans the rest of the listing. This is the last one, she swears. After this, she goes to bed. Do you like cats? I’m looking for a reliable, trustworthy person to come by at least twice a day during the week to feed my cats and change the litter boxes. Sitting and playing with them for a half hour every day is a plus. “Every day?” Why would someone bother to have a cat if they aren’t going to be home to care for it? The listing continues: $20 each visit, plus mileage if you have to drive more than 20 minutes to my house. Occasional vet or groomer visits will be paid extra. Dayla has to read that twice. Forty bucks just to feed a cat twice a day and scoop its poop? That’s the easiest money I’ll ever make. Damn. Even a good tip on a cut and dye tops out around thirty bucks. And she gets paid more if she has to go to the vet or groomer. Though, realistically, how often does a cat need to be groomed? They clean themselves, and don’t roll around in mud and s**t like dogs. There might be a vet visit or two—for shots, probably—but going to the groomer’s doesn’t sound likely. Forty dollars a day. Under the table, too. Surely the person who placed the ad isn’t going to give her a 1099 at the end of the year, the way Blossom does. So she probably won’t even have to claim the payments on her taxes. Forty bucks to take care of a cat on her own time. Hell, she can do that. Without thinking about it further, Dayla clicks on the Apply Now link. When she’s filled out the short application, she finally turns off the phone and gets to bed.